2024_Speaker_für_NL - 12th International mRNA Health Conference

CONFIRMED SPEAKER

Here you can get an overview of the speakers who have already confirmed their participation for 2024. New speakers will be added gradually.

Keynote Speaker

Peter Marks

USA

Peter Marks, MD, PhD

Director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, FDA

Peter Marks received his graduate degree in cell and molecular biology and his medical degree at New York University and completed Internal Medicine residency and Hematology/Medical Oncology training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He has worked in academic settings teaching and caring for patients and in industry on drug development and is an author or co-author of over 100 publications. He joined the FDA in 2012 as Deputy Center Director for CBER and became Center Director in 2016. Over the past several years he has been integrally involved in the response to various public health emergencies, and in 2022 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Drew Weissmann

Pennsylvania, USA

Drew Weissman

Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research and director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation in Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is recognized for his work alongside Katalin Karikó in discovering the modified mRNA technology, which has launched a new era of vaccine development. Their mRNA research breakthrough has been used in both the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines and has revolutionized the field of vaccine development. Dr. Weissman’s current research focuses on developing a pan-coronavirus vaccine to stop the next coronavirus epidemic, a universal flu vaccine, cancer therapeutics, and a vaccine to prevent herpes.

Dr. Weissman earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry and enzymology from Brandeis University in 1981 and his M.D. and Ph.D. in immunology and microbiology in 1987 at Boston University School of Medicine. Following a residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, he took a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where he worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Weissman hold many patents and has published over 200 papers. He has been recognized with numerous awards including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, and the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.

Hiroshi Abe

Nagoya, Japan

Hiroshi Abe

Hiroshi Abe is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Japan. He is a leading researcher in the field of chemical biology of nucleic acids and RNA therapeutics. Professor Abe received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Hokkaido University under the supervision of Professor Akira Matsuda. He also holds an M.S. and B.S. from Hokkaido University’s School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.Before joining Nagoya University in 2015, he served as an Associate Professor at Hokkaido University (2013-2015) and as a Researcher at RIKEN (2005-2013). His postdoctoral research was conducted under the guidance of Professor Eric Kool at Stanford University (2002-2005) and Professor Joanne Stubbe at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2001-2002).

Professor Abe’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Incentive Award of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan (2010), the Japanese Society of Nucleic Acid Medicine Award for Chemistry-Based Nucleic Acid Drug Research (2020), and the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry Corporate Endowed Award, Kaneka Life Science Award (2024).

His research has led to significant advancements in RNA therapeutics and chemical biology. Some of his notable works include studies on cap analogs with hydrophobic photocleavable tags, complete chemical synthesis of minimal messenger RNA, and chemical modification of mRNA for more efficient protein synthesis. He has founded Crafton biotechnology.

Professor Abe can be contacted at abe.hiroshi.p4@f.mail.nagoya-u.ac.jp, and his office is located at the Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 464-8602, Japan.

Daniel G. Anderson

Cambridge, USA

Daniel G. Anderson

Daniel G. Anderson is the Joseph R. Mares (1924) Professor of Chemical Engineering, a core member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and an intramural member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. He is a leading researcher in the fields of nanotherapeutics and biomaterials. His work has led to advances in a range of areas, including medical devices, cell therapy, drug delivery, gene therapy and material science, and has resulted in the publication of more than 500 papers, patents, and patent applications. He has founded several companies, including Living Proof, Olivo Labs, Crispr Therapeutics (CRSP), Sigilon Therapeutics, Verseau Therapeutics, oRNA, VasoRx, and Souffle Therapeutics. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology, a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and is an affiliate of the Broad and Ragon Institutes.

Tim Beissert

Mainz, Germany

Tim Beissert

Tim Beissert studied biology at the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, where he received his diploma in 1999. Next he did his PhD thesis at the University Clinic Frankfurt, Germany, where he investigated the mechanism of resistance of Philadelphia-chromosome positive leukemia towards Imatinib. After continuing in the field of leukemia as a postdoc for 4 years, he changed his field of research in 2008 by joining the lab of Ugur Sahin in Mainz, Germany. Since then Tim is working on the improvement of RNA vectors, and since 2010 he is heading the Vectors team at the Mainz-based research Institute TRON. Tim and his team have been developing and improving trans-amplifying RNA for the use as vaccine platform.

Sven Even Borgos

Trondheim, Norway

Lingling Chen

Shanghai, China

Yizhou Dong

New York, USA

Yizhou Dong

Yizhou Dong is a Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research focuses on the design and development of biotechnology platforms for the treatment of genetic disorders, infectious diseases, and cancer. Dr. Dong has authored over one hundred papers and patents. Over seventy of his patents have been licensed by biotech companies and are currently under development as drug candidates for clinical trials. He serves as a scientific advisory board member for Arbor Biotechnologies and Sirnagen Therapeutics. Dr. Dong is the recipient of multiple awards, such as Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Emerging Leader Award. Dr. Dong is an elected fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and also an elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Jeff Coller

Baltimore, USA

Erol Fikrig

Connecticut, USA

Erol Fikrig

Erol Fikrig leads a research team studying the molecular immunopathogenesis of arthropod-borne diseases. Lyme disease, caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, is the most common tick-borne illness in North America. Both B. burgdorferi, and the Ixodes scapularis ticks that harbor the spirochete, are major long-standing interests of his group. Studies are directed at understanding the interactions between pathogen, vertebrate host, and arthropod vector that result in virulence and transmission. Additional areas of investigation include the molecular basis of disease in animal models and patients with Lyme disease.

Moritz K. Jansson

Rostock, Germany

Moritz Jansson

Moritz Jansson graduated from the University of Lübeck, Germany, in 2015 with a degree in medicine and completed his doctoral thesis at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Afterward, he joined the Rostock University Medical Centre, where he worked in internal medicine within the Department of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases. Currently, he specializes in clinical microbiology at the Institute of Medical Microbiology, Virology, and Hygiene (IMIKRO), where he manages the biosafety level 3 lab. In 2021, Moritz earned an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He and his team are working on an mRNA-based approach to target bacterial infections caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, a leading cause of bacterial respiratory disease worldwide which has been placed on the WHO 2017 and 2024 Bacterial Priority Pathogens List (BPPL). Expanding on this work, Moritz’s team is developing cell culture-based screening methods to test mRNA-based antibacterial substances.

Karin Joos

California, USA

Christian Kastrup

Wisconsin, USA

Christian Kastrup

Dr. Christian Kastrup is a Senior Investigator at the Versiti Blood Research Institute and a Professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin. His appointments are in the Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, and the Departments of Biochemistry, Biomedical Engineering, and Pharmacology and Toxicology. Additionally, he is an Affiliate Professor at The University of British Columbia and is a Co-founder of NanoVation Therapeutics, SeraGene Therapeutics, and CoMotion Drug Delivery Systems. Christian is a biochemist specializing in biotechnology and genetic medicines. He earned his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Chicago and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Bioengineering at MIT in the lab of Dr. Robert Langer. His research is centered on understanding and controlling blood coagulation and fibrinolysis proteins. He is driven by the potential to improve health outcomes of young people by addressing the impact of hemorrhage during trauma and childbirth, as well as thrombosis-related conditions such as strokes and deep vein thrombosis. In his laboratory, Christian’s team creates RNA therapeutics, lipid nanoparticles, advanced drug delivery systems, and new blood products for transfusion medicine. They work in close collaboration with a variety of stakeholders, including the Canadian Armed Forces, the US Army, blood centers, and others within and beyond the field of blood research. This research is currently funded by the NIH, US Department of Defense, Canadian Department of National Defence, American Heart Association, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and others. Christian has trained and supervised over a hundred scientists and clinicians in his laboratory with these shared goals.

Hai-Quan Mao

Baltimore, USA

Craig Martin

Amherst, USA

Craig Martin

Professor of Chemistry, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Ph.D. California Institute of Technology; Postdoctoral: Yale University

The Martin Lab has studied structure and function of T7 RNA polymerase for more than three decades and has recently pivoted towards exploiting that expertise towards designing truly novel approaches to RNA synthesis and manufacturing across all scales, from R&D and Discovery, to clinical trials, to production, and in personalized mRNA therapeutics. Recently published approaches are accessible to bench syntheses and simplified platforms for manufacturing are in development. The primary goal is much higher purity RNA (e.g., eliminating dsRNA at synthesis), produced under more native conditions, but the advances will also lead to dramatically reduced costs of production. Towards demonstrating the improvements in quality, the lab is also developing analytics that go beyond low sensitivity approaches currently in use and that will be meaningful at all RNA lengths. We aim to raise the quality bar and then beat it.

Michael J. Mitchell

Pennsylvania, USA

Serena Omo-Lamai

Pennsylvania, USA

Yusuke Sato

Sapporo, Japan

Elias Sayour

Florida, USA

Elias Sayour

Elias Sayour, M.D., PhD, is an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at the University of Florida (UF) and Co-Leader of the UF Health Cancer Center’s Immuno-Oncology and Microbiome (IOM) Program. He completed undergraduate training at Fordham University, received his medical degree from the University at Buffalo, and his doctorate from Duke University.

After finishing his pediatric residency at the Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center in NY, he completed a hematology-oncology fellowship at Duke University Medical Center before accepting a faculty position at the University of Florida. Dr. Sayour is currently an NIH funded investigator, and a board certified pediatrician and oncologist. He has extensive translational experience having served as sponsor of multiple FDA-IND submissions and as PI/Study Chair on first-in-human clinical trials. He serves as institutional PI for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium (PBTC) and Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium (PNOC) and has spearheaded creation of the UF Pediatric Cancer Immunotherapy Initiative (PCI2) and UF Large Animal Comparative Oncology Initiative. He serves as principal investigator of the RNA Engineering Laboratory where he has been the primary inventor on a number of pending patent applications concerning the immunologic treatment of cancer.

Xiao Wang

Cambridge, USA

John Wherry

Pennsylvania, USA

Industry sponsored speaker

Marco Ciufolini

Michigan, USA

Marco Ciufolini

Dr. Ciufolini obtained his PhD in chemistry at the University of Michigan and after postodoctoral studies at Yale University, he became an academic. He held faculty positions at Rice University, Houston, TX (1984-1998), the Université Claude Bernard and ESCPE in Lyon, France (1998-2004), and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (2004-2021). Marco Ciufolini have over 30 years’ experience as consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, and contributed to the development of 3 commercial pharmaceuticals, including Onpattro.® He is a co-founder of NanoVation Therapeutics (NTx), and 6 other companies, and he is the author of more than 160 technical papers and 45 patents.

Oladimeji Fashola

Illinois, USA

May Guo

With a wealth of experience spanning over 15 years in Operations, Strategic Business Development, and Process Development, Oladimeji Fashola brings a strong foundation in chemical engineering to his extensive career in diverse industries. His professional journey has encompassed various sectors, from heavy chemicals to pharmaceuticals, with his most recent focus centered on biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

Oladimeji has had the privilege of contributing to groundbreaking market applications, resulting in the approval of life-saving vaccines and advancements in cell and gene therapy. Currently, Oladimeji Fashola is deeply committed to enhancing and streamlining Quantoom’s technology, with the ultimate goal of increasing the affordability and accessibility of biologics for all.

In his leisure time, you’ll frequently find Oladimeji Fashola unwinding by immersing himself in documentary films or embarking on exploratory journeys to new destinations.

Contact Details: info@quantoom.com

Website: https://www.quantoom.com/

Régis Gervier

Lyon, France

Régis Gervier

Régis is responsible for creating and leading the Sanofi’s mRNA Center of Excellence, which is key to accelerating the development and delivery of prophylactic and therapeutic solutions based on mRNA technology. The mRNA Center is a fully integrated organization with teams dedicated to mRNA & LNP Research, CMC activities, GMP manufacturing and Applied Data Sciences. The Center of Excellence is located both in the USA and France.

Régis started his career at Sanofi 28 years ago in the R&D Dpt as Biotechnology Process Development Scientist & has since held successive leadership positions at Sanofi and Sanofi Vaccine in R&D and Industrial Operations worldwide. Before assuming his role at the CoE, Régis was leading the global Evolutive Vaccine Facility (EVF) program for France and Singapore. Biotech Engineer by training, he holds complementarily a Master in Microbiology and an MBA from McGill University.

Andreas Kuhn

Mainz, Germany

Andreas Kuhn

Andreas Kuhn has worked with RNA for almost thirty years. This started with his diploma and PhD theses on the structure and function of small non-coding RNAs using biochemical and molecular biology methods. In his post-doctoral work, Andreas studied RNA-protein interactions in the spliceosome in yeast and later worked on small molecules to affect pre-mRNA splicing. His work on mRNA-based immunotherapies began in 2007 in the academic group of Ugur Sahin at the University Clinic Mainz, and Andreas joined BioNTech SE shortly after its founding in 2008. In his current role as Senior Vice President RNA Biochemistry & CMC Development the main focus is expanding proprietary technologies to increase the efficacy of mRNA-based therapies and to develop and optimize GMP-compatible manufacturing processes and analytical methods for RNA. He has co-authored numerous publications and patents ranging from basic research on RNA to its application as a therapeutic agent and vaccine.

Romain Micol

Massachusetts, USA

Romain Micol

Dr. Romain Micol has been President, co-founder, and Chief Executive Officer of Combined Therapeutics since 2016. Previously, he held several positions in R&D and Business Development across the Institut Mérieux group: ABL Inc (USA), Shantha Biotechnics (India), and Transgene (China and France). Dr. Micol helped to set up the first reference center for primary immunodeficiency in France in 2005. Dr. Micol is an entrepreneur with affiliations to six famous universities (Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT in the U.S., LSE in the UK, Paris VI, Paris V, Paris Dauphine in France and Global LBS in the UK). Dr. Micol obtained his Medical Degree (two specializations in Infectious Diseases and Public Health) from Pierre et Marie Curie University, his Ph.D. in Communicable Diseases from Paris Descartes University, his Master of Business Administration from Hult International Business School and his LLM (Corporate Law – Intellectual Property) from the London School and Economics, and his Advanced Management Program from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

CONFIRMED SPEAKER

Keynote Speaker

Peter Marks

USA

Drew Weissmann

Pennsylvania, USA

Hiroshi Abe

Nagoya, Japan

Daniel G. Anderson

Cambridge, USA

Tim Beissert

Mainz, Germany

Sven Even Borgos

Trondheim, Norway

Lingling Chen

Shanghai, China

Yizhou Dong

New York, USA

Jeff Coller

Baltimore, USA

Erol Fikrig

Connecticut, USA

Moritz K. Jansson

Rostock, Germany

Karin Joos

California, USA

Christian Kastrup

Wisconsin, USA

Hai-Quan Mao

Baltimore, USA

Craig Martin

Amherst, USA

Michael J. Mitchell

Pennsylvania, USA

Serena Omo-Lamai

Pennsylvania, USA

Yusuke Sato

Sapporo, Japan

Elias Sayour

Florida, USA

Xiao Wang

Cambridge, USA

John Wherry

Pennsylvania, USA

Industry sponsored speaker

Marco Ciufolini

Michigan, USA

Oladimeji Fashola

Illinois, USA

Régis Gervier

Lyon, France

Andreas Kuhn

Mainz, Germany

Romain Micol

Massachusetts, USA

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