SPEAKERS of 2022
Please see below the speakers of 2022 - we will update the speakers page for 2023 accordingly later this year:
Keynotespeaker
British Columbia, Canada
Pieter R. Cullis
Pieter R. Cullis, PhD, FRSC, FNAI (USA), OC, Director, Nanomedicines Research Group, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of British Columbia. Dr. Cullis and co-workers have been responsible for fundamental advances in the development of nanomedicines employing lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology for cancer therapies, gene therapies and vaccines. This work has contributed to five drugs that have received clinical approval. Dr. Cullis has co-founded eleven biotechnology companies that now employ over 300 people, has published over 350 scientific articles (h index 128) and is an inventor on over 60 patents. He has also co-founded two National Centre of Excellence networks, the Centre for Drug Research and Development (now AdMare) in 2004 and the NanoMedicines Innovation Network in 2019. These not-for-profit networks are aimed at translating basic research into commercially viable products. Dr. Cullis has received numerous awards including the Order of Canada in 2021 and the VinFuture Prize (Vietnam), the Prince Mahidol Award (Thailand), the Tang Award (Taiwan) and the Gairdner International Award (Canada) in 2022. Two recently approved drugs that are enabled by LNP delivery systems devised by Dr. Cullis, members of his UBC laboratory and colleagues in the companies he has co-founded deserve special emphasis. The first is Onpattro which was approved by the US FDA in August 2018 to treat the previously fatal hereditary condition transthyretin-induced amyloidosis (hATTR). Onpattro is the first RNAi drug to receive regulatory approval. The second is Comirnaty, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech that has received regulatory approval in many jurisdictions including Canada, the USA, the UK and Europe. Comirnaty is playing a major role in containing the global Covid-19 pandemic with approximately 3B doses administered worldwide in 2021.
Robert S. Langer
Massachusetts, USA
Robert S. Langer
Robert Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written over 1,500 articles, which have been cited over 368,000 times; his h-index of 301 is the highest of any engineer in history and the 3rd highest of any individual in any field. His patents have licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies; he is a cofounder of a number of companies including Moderna. Dr Langer served as Chairman of the FDA’s Science Board (its highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. His over 220 awards include both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (he is one of 3 living individuals to have received both these honors), the Charles Stark Draper Prize (often called the Engineering Nobel Prize), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Albany Medical Center Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Kyoto Prize, Wolf Prize for Chemistry, Millennium Technology Prize, Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), Gairdner Prize, Hoover Medal, Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine. He holds 39 honorary doctorates, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Northwestern, and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors.
Speakers
Hiroshi Abe
Hokkaido, Japan
Hiroshi Abe
Professor Hiroshi Abe, raised up in Hokkaido, Japan, got BS from Hokkaido University (1991-1996), MS from Hokkaido University(1996-1998), PhD from Hokkaido University (1998-2001). Postdoc Associate in Massachusetts Institute Technology (2001-2002). Postdoc Associate in Stanford University (2002-2005). Senior Research Scientist, RIKEN Advanced Science Institute (2005-2013). Associate Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Hokkaido University (2013-2015). Professor, Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University (2015-current).
Research Interests:
1) Medicinal Chemistry of Nucleic Acid
2) RNA function (translation)
3) Synthesis of long nucleic acids
Important papers:
1. N. Abe, M. Hiroshima, H. Maruyama, Y. Nakashima, Y. Nakano, A. Matsuda, Y. Sako, Y. Ito, H. Abe, “Rolling circle amplification in a prokaryotic translation system using small circular RNA”, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 7004-7008
2. N. Abe, K. Matsumoto, M. Nishihara, Y. Nakano, A. Shibata, H. Maruyama, S. Shuto, A. Matsuda, M. Yoshida, Y. Ito, H. Abe, “Rolling Circle Translation of Circular RNA in Living Human Cells.”, Scientific Reports, 2015, 5, 16435.
3. Z. Shu, I. Tanaka, A. Ota, D. Fushihara, N. Abe, S. Kawaguchi, K. Nakamoto, F. Tomoike, S. Tada, Yo. Ito, Y. Kimura, H. Abe, “Disulfide-unit conjugation enables ultrafast cytosolic internalization of antisense DNA and siRNA”, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2019, 58, 6611-6615.
4. N. Abe, A. Imaeda, M. Inagaki, Z. Li, D. Kawaguchi, K. Onda, Y. Nakashima, S. Uchida, F. Hashiya, Y. Kimura, H. Abe, “Complete Chemical Synthesis of Minimal Messenger RNA by Efficient Chemical Capping Reaction” ACS Chemical Biology DOI: 10.1021/acschembio.1c00996,(2022)
Hayat Bähr-Mahmud
Mainz, Germany
Hayat Bähr-Mahmud
Dr. Hayat Bähr-Mahmud is Co-Senior Director of the Bispecific Antibodies Unit at BioNTech SE. She received her biology diploma from Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Her Ph.D. research at the Institute for Tumor Biology and Experimental Therapy (Georg-Speyer-Haus), Frankfurt, focused on anti-cancer humanized immunotoxin-like molecules. In 2009, she joined Ugur Sahin’s research group at the Mainz University Medical Center as a post-doc, where she started working on the development of RNA-encoded therapeutic antibodies (RiboMabs). She and her group later transitioned to BioNTech in 2014 to establish a unit specializing in the RiboMab platform, whose efforts have brought the first cancer-directed antibody-encoding RNA therapeutic to clinical trials.
Constanze Blume
Mainz, Germany
Constanze Blume
Constanze Blume, PhD is SVP of Global Regulatory Affairs at BioNTech.
She joined the company in September 2018 and established the Global Regulatory Affairs team. Since mid-2020 she supported as global regulatory lead the development, registration, and lifecycle of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (COMIRNATY) in collaboration with Pfizer. Currently, she is working on development projects in immuno-oncology and other projects such as BioNTainer.
Before joining BioNTech Constanze gained experience in several areas of regulatory affairs, mainly oncology pipelines of biologics and IVD platforms as well as market access initiatives and assets transfers.
James Byrne
Iowa, USA
James Byrne
James Byrne is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Iowa. He received his BS in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and MD and PhD (lab of Prof. Joseph DeSimone) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He subsequently completed his residency in Radiation Oncology at the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program and post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Prof. Robert Langer and Prof. Gio Traverso. During his time at MIT, he was named the Sakonnet Hope Funds for Cancer Research Fellow at the Koch Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has assisted in starting up Advanced Chemotherapy Technologies, a company centered on an implantable iontophoretic device for pancreatic cancer that was the focus of his dissertation research; the company has received multiple SBIR grants, series A financing, and is moving into clinical trials later this year. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he also co-founded a reusable N95 respirator company, Teal Bio, that has achieved an oversubscribed series A financing and is undergoing NIOSH approval testing before launching in multiple hospitals across the US.
Marco Cavaleri
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Marco Cavaleri
Marco Cavaleri is Head of Office, Biological Health Threats and vaccines strategy. He is the Chair of EMA COVID-19 Task Force (ETF) and responsible for EMA activities for emergent pathogens, vaccines and AMR.
Marco Cavaleri is a Pharmacologist who spent several years in industry in R&D mainly in the area of anti-infectives covering different positions in preclinical and clinical development.
In 2005 he joined the EMEA as Scientific Administrator in the Scientific Advice Sector, specifically being in charge of anti-infectives and vaccines scientific advice procedures.
In 2009 he was appointed as Head of Section for Anti-infectives and vaccines in the Safety&Efficacy Sector, Human Medicines Development and Evaluation Unit.
Jeff Coller
Maryland, USA
Jeff Coller
Jeff Coller is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of RNA Biology and Therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University.
His lab has made seminal discoveries in the area of messenger RNA stability and translation. He received his Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Arizona. Prior to moving to Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Coller served as Director of the RNA Center at Case Western Reserve University.
He studies the very essence of life: translation of the genetic code. His work has led to fundamental shifts in the understanding of gene expression by demonstrating that the genetic code is a major determinant of mRNA fate. He is the Scientific Co-founder of Tevard Biosciences which leverages his discoveries for the treatment of haploinsufficiency disorders. In 2018, Tevard Biosciences was awarded Pfizer’s Golden Ticket award for promising neuroscience startups. His publications have been cited over 6000 times and he currently holds several patents for RNA-based therapeutic applications.
Gilles DIVITA
Nimes, France
Gilles DIVITA
Dr. Gilles DIVITA is founder and CEO of DivInCell (FR) and Chief Scientist at Aadigen LLC, California (USA), a BioPharmaceutical NanoMedicine Start-up pioneering a novel drug delivery technology for the treatment of cancer and genetic diseases. Dr. DIVITA has over 25 years of experience in drug delivery systems, peptide-drugs and oligonucleotide therapeutics. Dr Divita’s work focuses on strategies to probe and perturb the behaviour of biomolecules in physiological and pathological settings. He is the pioneer of the “non covalent cell penetrating peptide-based strategy” for therapeutic delivery. Dr. DIVITA is author of over 200 articles in peer reviewed scientific journals and of 21 granted patents. Dr. DIVITA holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry/Biophysic from the University in Lyon, France. From 1992-1994, he worked as an Associate Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg-Germany and as Associate Professor at the SCRIPPS Research Institute, La jolla, USA. In 1996, Dr. DIVITA joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and was Research Director, head of Chemical Biology and Nanotechnology for Therapeutics Team at the CNRS in Montpellier-France up to 2016.
Andrzej Dziembowski
Warsaw, Poland
Peter Marks
Andrzej Dziembowski is the head of an ERA Chair Group at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw, is a professor at the Warsaw University Faculty of Biology, and holds the Waclaw Szybalski Honorary Chair at the University of Gdańsk. He is also a member of EMBO and Academia Europaea.
Prof. Dziembowski graduated from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Warsaw, where he received his PhD. For several years, he worked at the CNRS Center for Molecular Genetics in Gif-sur-Yvette, France. He then headed an independent laboratory at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. In 2019, the laboratory moved to the International Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology in Warsaw.
Prof. Dziembowski’s primary research interest is posttranscriptional gene expression regulation. In the past, the focus has been on the mechanistic aspects of RNA metabolism. Currently, the lab studies RNA biology at the organism level, using Direct RNA Sequencing as an experimental approach and transgenic mouse lines as a model system. Three areas are of particular interest:
– Processive ribonucleases that shape the transcriptome of eukaryotic cells by RNA degradation.
– Cytoplasmic poly(A) and poly(U) polymerases that attach non-templated nucleotides to the 3′ ends of RNA molecules to affect their stability and biological functions.
– Metabolism of mRNA therapeutics in vivo.
Prof. Dziembowski is the author of more than 100 research articles, many of which have been published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Cell, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, Genes and Development, Molecular Cell, EMBO Journal and EMBO Reports.
Ana Jaklenec
Massachusetts, USA
Ana Jaklenec
Dr. Ana Jaklenec is a Research Scientist and co-Principal Investigator at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Langer at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Her group is focused on engineering delivery systems for global health. Dr. Jaklenec has over 10 years of experience in the area of bioengineering, materials science, micronutrient and vaccine stabilization and delivery. Dr. Jaklenec holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University. She is the recipient of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Jaklenec was elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows in 2022 for her work in controlled delivery of vaccines and heat-stable micronutrients for global health that can change the world. She was also elected to the Controlled Release Society (CRS) College of Fellows in 2022 for her research at the interface of engineering and immunology that utilizes precise fabrication and design of materials at the nano- and micro-scale for use in controlled drug delivery for global health. She has supervised over 50 pre- and postdoctoral students and has written over 30 articles in high impact journals and has over 20 issued and pending patents worldwide. She is an active member of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Controlled Release Society, and the Society for Biomaterials.
Adam Hacker
London, UK
Hani Zaher
Adam Hacker is the Head of Global Regulatory Affairs, Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). As part of his role at CEPI, Adam co-chairs the COVAX Regulatory Advisory Group, consisting of thirteen regulatory authorities, where regulatory issues related to COVID-19 vaccine development are discussed. He has more than 20 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in leadership roles extending from Regulatory Affairs to Quality and Medical Affairs, including 10 years at Janssen.
Charbel Haber
Massachusetts, USA
Charbel Haber
Current Responsibilities: Charbel Haber joined Moderna in April 2020 as a Senior Vice-President of Global Regulatory Science. In this role, Charbel is responsible of building a global regulatory organization, which comprises a number of regulatory functions including Strategy, Policy, Operations, CMC and Labeling to support Moderna’s pipeline including the development and the global registration of Vaccines and Therapeutics, including the COVID-19 Vaccine.
Prior Experience: Charbel worked most recently at Biogen, where he was a VP in Global Safety and Regulatory Sciences. Charbel has an extensive and diverse global regulatory background having worked at EMD Serono, Novartis (both in the US and in EU), PTC Therapeutics, MedImmune and Merck. His experiences include Vaccines and both large and small molecules across a number of modalities and therapeutic areas spanning gene therapy, biologics, Anti-Sense Oligonucleotides, orphan, neurological, respiratory, cardiovascular, inflammatory, and auto-immune diseases. Of particular note, Charbel led the regulatory development and registration of the Fluvirin-H1N1 vaccine at Novartis during the H1N1 Flu pandemic in 2009.
Education: Charbel holds a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University, a Masters’ degree in Public Health from Thomas Jefferson University, and an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Anastasia Khvorova
Massachusetts, USA
Elizabeth Rosado Balmayor
Anastasia Khvorova, Ph.D., has more than 20 years of experience developing oligonucleotide technology and therapeutics. She is a professor in the RNA Therapeutics Institute and Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) (Chan Medical School, where her lab brings together hardcore organic and oligonucleotide chemists with RNA biologists and pharmacologists to develop novel approaches and solutions to understanding natural and therapeutic RNA trafficking and delivery. Dr.
‘Khvorova founded the UMass Nucleic Acid Chemistry Center, the only nonprofit facility in /North America capable of gram-scale synthesis of modified oligonucleotides.
Prior to UMass Chan Medical School, Dr. Khvorova spent 12 years in industry in different executive positions. She has co-founded several biotechnology companies.
Dr. Khvorova is named as inventor on more than 150 patents and 300 patent applications and has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, including seminal articles in Cell, Nature, and Nature Biotechnology, defining the field of RNAi drug design and development. Dr. Khvorova is principal investigator on three major National Institutes of Health grants. She has served as a director of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society and currently is Director-at-Large and Scientific & Research Council Chair of the American
Kristin Koutmou
Michigan, USA
Kristin Koutmou
Dr. Kristin Koutmou is the Seyhan N. Ege Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. She began her scientific career at the University of Colorado at Denver where she obtained her B.S. in Chemistry. Dr. Koutmou then moved to the Department of Chemistry at the University of Michigan for her doctoral work. During her time at Michigan she trained in mechanistic enzymology with Professor Carol Fierke, studying how bacterial ribonuclease P binds and matures precursor tRNAs. Following her PhD studies, Dr. Koutmou joined the laboratory of Professor Rachel Green at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. In the Green lab, Dr. Koutmou investigated the molecular level details of translation elongation and termination. In 2016, Dr. Koutmou returned to the University of Michigan to begin her independent career. Her laboratory is in the Department of Chemistry, and she also holds affiliations with the Program in Chemical Biology graduate program and Department of Biological Chemistry. Dr. Koutmou’s lab studies the post-transcriptional control of gene regulation by the ribosome. Work in the Koutmou lab broadly seeks to understand how mRNA and tRNA modifications are incorporated, and to uncover their consequences on protein synthesis.
Lena Kranz
Mainz, Germany
Lena Kranz
Focus on preclinical research on RNA vaccines, RNA-based immunomodulators, combination therapy.
BioNTech, Mainz
2020 to present | Director Cancer Vaccines
BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals, Mainz
2018 to 2020 | Head of Cancer Vaccines
BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals, Mainz
2017 to 2018 | Scientist
University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
2015 to 2017 | Scientist
University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
2011 to 2015 | PhD in Immunology
Hyukjin Lee
Seoul, South Korea
Hyukjin Lee
Prof. Hyukjin Lee is a distinguished Professor of Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and College of Pharmacy at Ewha Womans University. He received his B.S. degree from the Johns Hopkins University, M.S. degree from the Columbia University, and Ph.D. from KAIST under the mentorship of Prof. Tae Gwan Park. Prof. Lee did his postdoctoral training with Prof. Robert Langer at MIT. His research group focuses on development of RNA therapeutics for gene therapy. Particularly, his group developed the enzymatic and biological preparation of large-scale synthesis of functional RNA nanostructures for gene therapy applications. In addition, non-viral gene delivery systems such as lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) were developed for in vivo delivery of RNA therapeutics. Targeted delivery approach including ligand incorporation and surface modification of LNP has been investigated.
David Lockhart
Massachusetts, USA
David Lockhart
Dr. Lockhart is an accomplished biotech executive with more than 25 years of experience across all phases of drug discovery, drug development and technology development.
Prior to becoming president and CSO of ReCode Therapeutics in January 2022, he served as CEO and president of the company since March 2020. Prior to serving as CEO and president of ReCode, he was CEO and president of its predecessor, TranscripTx from 2014 – 2020. Prior to TranscripTx, he was the Chief Scientific Officer at Amicus Therapeutics from 2006 through 2013. He led a team at Amicus that brought multiple rare disease programs into clinical trials.
Previously, he co-founded Ambit Biosciences, serving as Chief Scientific Officer and president for 5 years, during which the company developed a novel kinase profiling technology and new kinase inhibitors for cancer and other diseases. Prior to Ambit, Dr. Lockhart served as Director of Genomics at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF). Dr. Lockhart began his biotech career at Affymetrix, where he was the primary inventor and developer of gene expression profiling with DNA microarrays.
Dr. Lockhart received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute in the Biology Department at MIT. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific articles on pharmacological chaperones, mutation-specific selection of patients for clinical trials, clinical studies with pharmacological chaperones, genomics, kinase technology, kinase inhibitor discovery, and the use of genomic tools to address important biological and biomedical problems. He is also the inventor on more than 40 issued U.S. patents.
Julius Lucks
Illinois ,USA
Julius B. Lucks
Julius B. Lucks is Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern
University. Lucks received his PhD in chemical physics from Harvard University and
transitioned to synthetic biology as a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley. He is an award-winning
leader in RNA research and synthetic biology, focusing on developing technologies that
tackle global challenges, most recently in the area of global water insecurity. He is also the
PI of the first NSF graduate training program in synthetic biology. Professor Lucks has
been recognized with a number of awards including a DARPA Young Faculty Award, an
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, an ONR Young Investigator Award, an
NIH New Innovator Award, an NSF CAREER award, the ACS Synthetic Biology Young
Investigator Award, a Camille-Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, a finalist for the Blavatnik
Awards for Young Scientists, and was most recently inducted into the American Institute of
Medical and Biomedical Engineers. He is a founding member of the Engineering Biology
Research Consortium, and co-founded the Cold Spring Harbor Synthetic Biology Summer
Course. He is also a co-founder of Stemloop, Inc. which aims to use cell free biosensing
technology to empower people to make meaningful community health decisions.
Ajit Magadum
Philadelphia, USA
Ajit Magadum
Ajit Magadum, Ph.D., is an Associate Scientist at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. Ajit completed his Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim, German. His research was focused on screening for inducers of cardiomyocyte proliferation and cardiac regeneration. During his postdoctoral training at Mount Sinai, New York, he used the modified mRNA (modRNA) as a gene therapy tool targeting cardiovascular diseases (CVD). He, with his colleagues, developed modRNA delivery systems for the heart using different carriers and applied molecular approaches for robust and stable expression of modRNA in the heart. He found novel genes delivered as modRNA to the heart (Pkm2, Mut-FSTL1) inducing cardiomyocyte proliferation and cardiac regeneration. He recently elucidated that myocardial delivery of Pip4k2c inhibits cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis in heart failure conditions. Ajit pioneered the development of cell-specific mRNA delivery platforms called SMARTs (Specific Modified mRNA Translation System) to the heart. He showed that modRNA could be expressed exclusively into cardiomyocytes or non-cardiomyocytes in the heart and opened the field of cell-specific mRNA therapeutics for CVD. He won the Outstanding Research Innovation Award from Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, in 2017. He is the lead inventor on three patents and licensed two to a biotechnology company in 2022. Ajit was Runner-up in the esteemed ISHR-NAS Young Investigator Award (YICA) in 2022. He is a finalist for the prestigious Melvin L. Marcus Early Career Investigator Award in American Heart Association 2022.
Currently, his research focuses on using modRNA or cell-specific modRNA as a therapeutic approach to target CVD, induce cardiac regeneration, and improve function in heart failure, hypertrophy, and fibrosis conditions.
Paolo Martini
Massachusetts, USA
Born in Milano, Italy in 1967, Paolo studied at the University of Milano in Italy and graduated with a PhD in Molecular Endocrinology focusing on hormone-dependent cancers such as breast and prostate cancers. He had 3 different post-doctoral Fellowships starting at the University in Milan in 1995, followed by a Fellowship from the Schering Foundation (now Bayer) from 1996 to 1997collaborating to the cloning of the human estrogen receptor. He moved in early January1998 to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (USA) with a fellowship from the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation to study mechanism underlying estrogen receptors regulations by coregulatory proteins and cloning a novel regulator for the estrogen receptors responsive to estrogen receptors modulators.
Paolo Martini is now the Chief Scientific Officer for Rare Diseases, Hematology and Rare Alliances at Moderna. With more than 20 years of experience in drug discovery working on molecular mechanisms underlying monogenic and multigenic metabolic and fibrotic disorders, his laboratory is focused on identifying novel therapies and applying translational approaches for drug development in Rare Diseases and Hematology disorders. Currently exploring the identification of several targets and key animal models for translating messenger RNA therapeutic in human patients.
Previously at Shire Pharmaceutical in Lexington, MA, as Senior Director of Discovery Biology and Translational Research, Massachusetts, his focus was on fibrotic diseases of muscle, kidney, skin, lung, bone marrow and metabolic liver diseases with particular emphasis on different therapeutic modalities for pathway modulation. He has supported phase 1 and 2 clinical studies for lysosomal storage and chronic kidney diseases.
He has also worked at EMD-Serono prior to Shire in Discovery Research focusing on identifying key compounds for breast cancer treatment and understanding the complexity of breast tumor tissues and related markers. He is the authors of more than 40 publications in high peer-reviewed journals and several articles on scientific magazines spanning from oncology research to rare genetic disorder. He has been collaborating with organizations supporting research and clinical development of rare metabolic disorders and fibrotic diseases and serves as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Keystone Symposia, Certa Therapeutics (Melbourne, AUS) , and Board member of the Institute of Life Changing Medicines (USA) a non-profit company focusing on CN1 (Crigler-Najjar disease type 1).
Peter Marks
Maryland, USA
Peter Marks
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. He joined the FDA in 2012 as Deputy Center Director for CBER and became Center Director in 2016.
Florian Neske
Tübingen, Germany
Florian Neske
Dr. Florian Neske has gained experience in Regulatory Affairs CMC within the field of biologicals and small molecules for over 10 years. Dr. Neske received his PhD in Virology from Julius Maximilian University in Wuerzburg. After his PhD he worked as post-doctoral fellow at the Paul-Ehrlich Institute, where he discovered his interest for regulatory affairs. After four years as viral safety regulatory affairs assessor at the PEI, he joined CureVac in 2016 as RA CMC manager. For the past three years, he supported the CMC development of COVID vaccines and he currently heads the RA-CMC department as Associated Director RA-CMC, supporting the development of all mRNA therapeutic areas.
Scott Nickerson
Massachusetts, USA
Scott Nickerson
Scott Nickerson is Moderna’s Senior Vice President, Manufacturing for strategic partnerships and enterprise expansion. Prior to this role he served as Moderna’s SVP, US Manufacturing leading scale up and execution of COVID vaccine manufacturing during the global pandemic. Mr. Nickerson was previously the Global Head of Quality for Moderna as it pivoted from a preclinical company and scaled clinical GMP operations. Mr. Nickerson has extensive experience in Biotechnology supporting all phases of product development including Tox, Phase I – III and commercial launch and supply.
Mr. Nickerson has 25-years‘ experience at Pharmaceutical companies of all sizes including Eli Lilly and Company, Imclone Systems, and Alexion Pharmaceuticals. He has had roles ascending in responsibility in Quality Assurance, Quality Control Labs, and Manufacturing. His experience includes building and starting up new facilities and laboratories, building and improving quality systems, leading global health authority inspections, and leading efforts in support of product approvals globally. Mr. Nickerson has a B.S. in Chemistry from Hampden-Sydney College and a Master’s in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Arizona.
Rachel Niederer
Michigan, USA
Rachel Niederer
Rachel Niederer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry, a Faculty Scholar of the Center for RNA Biomedicine and member of the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. She received B.S. degrees in Biochemistry and Cell Biology and Genetics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2009. For her PhD she worked with David Zappulla at Johns Hopkins were she examined the cellular response to short telomere induced senescence as well as structure function relationships within telomerase RNAs. She performed her postdoctoral work with Wendy Gilbert at Yale University developing a high-throughput method to measure ribosome recruitment to thousands of RNAs in parallel. She is broadly interested in how RNA features affect biological processes. Currently, her group uses a combination of high-throughput methods and classical biochemistry to identify and characterize RNA regulatory features with the goal of engineering improved mRNA therapeutics.
Emrah Ilker Ozay
Massachusetts, USA
Emrah Ilker Ozay
I got my PhD in Immunology and Polymer Science from UMass Amherst where I focused on engineering regulatory T cells with cell-penetrating antibodies for the treatment of Graft versus Host Disease. After I graduated in 2018, I joined SQZ Biotechnologies as a Scientist in Immuno-oncology team. My role was to design and execute in vivo studies for an IND submission for our first clinical program, SQZ-PBMC-HPV. After the first successful IND submission, I contributed to two other clinical programs, SQZ-AAC-HPV and the most recent one SQZ-eAPC-HPV, where I was one of the two leading scientists to design and execute all the preclinical studies related to an IND. Currently, I am working as a Principal Scientist on developing a novel engineered TIL therapy by adapting some of the approaches from the eAPC program.
Steve Pascolo
Paris, France
Steve Pascolo
Trained as an immunologist at the Pasteur Institute (Paris, France), Dr. Steve Pascolo used mouse models to test and develop mRNA-based vaccines (direct injection of mRNA) during his post-doc in Tuebingen, Germany from 1998 till 2000. In 2000, he co-founded CureVac with Dr. Hoerr and Dr. von der Mulbe. Dr. Pascolo was Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of the company and responsible of pharmaceutical production of mRNA from 2000 till 2006, developing the technology, implementing the worldwide first GMP production of mRNA and performing in 2003 the worldwide first clinical studies where humans (including himself) got injections of in vitro transcribed mRNA. In 2006, he joined the oncology department of the University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland and continued the development of immunotherapies based on RNA. In 2008, he founded Miescher Pharma to support this work. In 2017, Dr. Pascolo implemented in Zurich an academic ivt mRNA platform https://www.cancer.uzh.ch/en/Research/mRNA-Platform.html. In collaboration with several research and clinical departments in Zurich he optimizes, tests and implements mRNA based vaccines and therapies.
Dan Peer
Tel Aviv, Israel
Dan Peer
Dan Peer is a Professor and the Director of the Laboratory of Precision NanoMedicine at Tel Aviv University (TAU). He is also the Vice President for Research and Development in Tel Aviv University, the biggest university in Israel. From 2017, he is the Founding and Managing Director of the SPARK program, Center for Translational Medicine at TAU.
Prof. Peer’s work was among the first to demonstrate systemic delivery of RNA molecules using targeted nanocarriers to the immune system and he pioneered the use of RNA interference (RNAi) as drug discovery tools in immune cells. In addition, his lab was the first to show systemic, cell specific delivery of modified mRNA in animals that induce therapeutic gene expression of desired proteins. This strategy has enormous implications in cancer ,inflammation and infection diseases. His lab developed one of the largest lipid library with unique properties and strategies to immobilized natural ligands and antibodies on the surface of Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for cell specific delivery of RNA payloads.
Recently, his lab was the first to show systemic, high efficiency, cell specific, therapeutic genome editing in cancer. Prof. Peer has more than 130 pending and granted patents. Some of them have been licensed to several pharmaceutical companies. In addition, based on his work, four spin-off companies were generated aiming to bring innovative personalized medicine into clinical practice. Prof. Peer is a scientific advisory board member in more than 15 companies and on the scientific advisory board of more than 20 journals.
Joseph Puglisi
California, USA
Joseph Puglisi
Joseph (Jody) Puglisi is Jauch Professor an CZO Biohub Investigator in the Department of Structural Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine. His work focuses on the biophysical and structural analysis of RNAs and RNA-protein Interactions and his group use broad biophysical and biochemical methods to understand the interplay of the structure and dynamics in a variety of systems, in particular translation. Born and raised in scienic New Jersey, he received a B.A degree in Chemistry in 1984 from the Hohn Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemestry from UC Berkeley in 1989 working with Ignacio Tinoco, Jr. After postdoctoral research in Strasbourg and MIT, he joined the faculty at UC Santa Cruz in Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1993. He moved to Stanford University in 1997, where he was Chair of the Department of Structural Biology from 2004 to 2014. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Bali Pulendran
California, USA
Bali Pulendran
Violetta L. Horton Professor, Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, Department of Pathology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Fellow at ChEM-H (Chemistry, Engineering and Medicine for Human Health), Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford University.
Bali Pulendran is the Violetta L. Horton Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and a member of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection, and the Departments of Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University. He is also an adjunct professor at Emory University and the Yerkes National Primate Center, and director of the NIH Center for Systems Vaccinology, at Emory University in Atlanta. He received his undergraduate degree in the Natural Sciences Tripos from Queens’ College, Cambridge University, and his Ph.D., from the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, under the supervision of Sir Gustav Nossal. He then did his post-doctoral work at Immunex Corporation in Seattle. Dr. Pulendran’s research is focused on understanding the mechanisms by which the innate immune system regulates adaptive immunity and harnessing such mechanisms in the design of novel vaccines. More recently, his laboratory pioneered the use of systems biological approaches to predicting the efficacy of vaccines and deciphering new molecular correlates of protection against infectious diseases. Dr. Pulendran’s research is published in front line journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Medicine, and Nature Immunology. Furthermore, Dr. Pulendran is the recipient of numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health, and from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, serves on many editorial boards, and is the recipient of two concurrent MERIT awards from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Pulendran serves on many advisory boards including that of Keystone Symposia and on the Immunology Network of GSK. He is listed on Thomson Reuter’s list of Highly Cited Researchers (ranked amongst top 1% of researchers most cited for their subject during the past decade).
Marion Pönisch
Tübingen, Germany
Marion Pönisch
Dr. Marion Pönisch received here biology diploma from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. In her Ph.D she focused on the research of mRNA viruses and continued post doc time in Freiburg until 2008. Afterwards she joined the group of Ralf Bartenschlager at the Department of Infectious Diseases, Molecular Virology at the University of Heidelberg, where she worked on analysis of Hepatitis C virus pathogenesis. Since 2014 she specialized on the mRNA based therapeutic approaches as a Senior Scientist in the department of Molecular Therapy at CureVac.
Bill Querbes
Massachusetts, USA
Bill Querbes
Bill joined Tessera in April of 2021 as Senior Vice President of Therapeutic Discovery and
Translational Sciences. At Tessera he leads the Delivery Biology, Discovery, Pharmacology,
Tox and DMPK functions.
Before joining Tessera, Bill held the position of Vice President and Fabry Program Lead at
AVROBIO. Prior to that, as Senior Director at Synlogic, he led discovery and clinical
program teams in PKU and other rare diseases. Earlier in his career he spent 12 years at
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals where he made important contributions to the maturation of both
the siRNA delivery platforms and therapeutic pipeline. Bill led the discovery and early
clinical development of GIVLAARI® (givosiran) for the treatment of acute hepatic porphyria,
which was the first FDA approved RNAi therapeutic utilizing GalNAc conjugate technology.
He holds a B.S. in Biology from SUNY Geneseo and a Ph.D. from Brown University.
Amy Rhoden Smith
North Carolina, USA
Amy Rhoden Smith
Amy Rhoden Smith is a Gene and Cell Therapy Program Leader at Precision BioSciences, which involves working with multiple teams within Precision to lead cell and gene editing therapy programs into and through preclinical and early clinical development. Through her previous positions at Moderna and Intellia Therapeutics, Amy has experience in CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, mRNA, and oligonucleotide therapeutic modalities particularly coupled with lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery. She received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin and her B.S. in Chemistry from College of Charleston in Charleston, SC.
Ruben Rizzi
Mainz, Germany
Ruben Rizzi
Ruben Rizzi, MD, is VP of Global Regulatory Affairs at BioNTech.
He joined the company in December 2019 and he is currently working on both immuno-oncology and infectious diseases developments. Since early 2020 he supported as global regulatory lead the development, registration, and lifecycle of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in collaboration with Pfizer (COMIRNATY).
Before joining BioNTech Ruben covered several areas of regulatory affairs, being responsible for regulatory activities for oncology pipelines of small molecules and biologics, hospital antinfectives, conjugated vaccines, liquid biopsy and IVD platforms, as well as contributing as regulatory and medical expert to pricing and market access initiatives and due diligence processes.
Elizabeth Rosado Balmayor
Aachen, Germany
Elizabeth Rosado Balmayor
Elizabeth Rosado Balmayor is currently University Professor for Experimental Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery at the RWTH Aachen University Hospital (Germany). She is the head of the newly created Teaching and Research Area at the Department of Orthopaedic, Trauma, and Reconstructive Surgery. She was trained as a Chemist and earned an M.Sc. in Materials Science and Technology at the University of Havana (Cuba). She received a Marie Curie scholarship in the area of Biomaterials and completed her Ph.D. in 2009 with Prof. Rui Reis at the 3B’s research group (Portugal). Elizabeth obtained her assistant professorship in Experimental Trauma Surgery from TUM (Germany) in 2017. Thereafter, she moved to the MERLN Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine at the Maastricht University (the Netherlands) where she was the Principal Investigator of the research group “Molecular Transfer and Therapy” until early 2022. She is an associate researcher with Prof. Chris Evans at the Mayo Clinic (USA) and holds visiting professorships at the Peruvian University Cayetano Heredia and the UNESCO Biomaterials chair of the University of Havana. Her achievements have been recognized with awards and grants, including the Hans-Liniger-Award by the German Society for Trauma Surgery, and projects from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the European H2020 funding scheme, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health – NIH. She has obtained over 3.5 million euros from competitive grants for her research.
A powerful breakthrough in Elizabeth’s research is the development of a chemically modified mRNA encoding BMP-2 as an alternative to traditional gene therapy for bone healing. She is a pioneer in the application of this novel technology to tissue regeneration and holds a patent on this discovery. She was part of the team of scientists that started Ethris GmbH (Germany), a company that develops chemically modified mRNA for therapy. Recently, the journal Science Advances published a compendium of Elizabeth’s results and the first demonstration of a critical-sized bone defect fully healed with chemically modified mRNA in a rodent model.
Elizabeth has published 66 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and authored 7 book chapters in books with international circulation. She is the author of 2 patents. In addition, she is the associate editor of several journals in the field of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. She is an active member of the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS), the European Orthopaedic Research Society (EORS), and the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS).
Bijoyita Roy
Massachusetts, USA
Bijoyita Roy
Dr. Bijoyita Roy received her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she explored the effects of mRNA 5’ leader sequences on translation initiation. Following her doctoral studies, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Allan Jacobson at UMass Chan Medical School to understand the interrelationship between mRNA stability and translation readthrough. She then pursued her interests in RNA biology at PTC Therapeutics, investigating the mechanism of action of Ataluren during translation readthrough. Dr. Roy then went on to New England Biolabs Inc. where she led a research group focused on developing novel tools and methods for RNA synthesis and understanding the consequences of introducing chemical modifications in synthetic mRNAs. Dr. Roy is currently leading the RNA Process Sciences group at Moderna Therapeutics.
Joel Rurik
Pennsylvania, USA
Joel Rurik
Joel Rurik is a fourth year PhD candidate in Dr. Jonathan A. Epstein’s laboratory at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He studied molecular biology and history at George Fox University, graduating Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in 2016. His current research is focused on using novel RNA delivery technologies to generate immuno-medicine therapeutics in vivo and is investigating how the cardiac mesenchyme interacts with the immune system following injury. Long-term, Joel is fascinated by the adaptive immune system and wants to leverage these powerful cells for human health.
John Talian
Massachusetts, USA
John Talian
John Talian, is Senior Vice President, Regulatory Affairs at Curevac. He is a senior regulatory affairs leader with over 30 years’ experience in the development, registration and life cycle management of compounds in the global marketplace. He has interacted extensively with FDA, EMA, and other health authorities worldwide.
Before joining Curevac, he led the Regulatory Affairs group at Hurley Consulting, was Vice President, US Head of Regulatory Affairs, Global Regulatory Affairs at Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals where he led a staff of 80 professionals with both local and global responsibilities for development projects and marketed products, as well as compliance activities. He managed critical US regulatory activities for the Bayer portfolio of products. He previously worked for Hoffmann-LaRoche Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in various regulatory positions in the US and Swiss Headquarters. Dr. Talian holds both a bachelor’s degree in cell and molecular biology and a doctoral degree in cell biology.
Robin Shattock
London, UK
Robin Shattock
Robin Shattock has over 30 years’ experience in research and development of vaccines
and antiviral therapeutics. He is a Professor of Mucosal Infection and Immunity at Imperial
College, London. The focus of his research is the development of vaccines to prevent
pandemic threats and poverty related diseases. His publications include over 250 peerreviewed
scientific papers published in a range of peer review journals. Prof Shattock has
led large multi-centre programs funded by the Wellcome Trust, MRC, EPSRC, CEPI, NIH,
European Commission, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His academic
research portfolio includes vaccine projects on SARS-CoV2, HIV, Ebola, Lassa fever,
Marburg and Rabies viruses and Chlamydia. He has a strong track record of translation
research having taken a wide range of vaccine products through from discovery into
clinical testing. The Shattock group was the first in the world to publish on the evaluation of
a self-amplifying RNA vaccine against COVID-19 in phase I/II clinical trials. Robin leads
the EPSRC Future Vaccines Manufacturing Research Hub at Imperial college. He is
Founder of VaxEquity Ltd an Imperial spin-out focused on development of RNA vaccines
against human infectious diseases. Robin is an elected fellow of the Academy of Medical
Sciences.
Giovanni Traverso
Massachusetts, USA
Giovanni Traverso
Prof. Traverso is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in the Division of Gastroenterology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School. Prof. Traverso grew up in Peru, Canada and the United Kingdom. He received his BA from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK, and his PhD from the lab of Prof. Bert Vogelstein at Johns Hopkins University. He subsequently completed medical school at the University of Cambridge, internal medicine residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his gastroenterology fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital, both at Harvard Medical School. Prof. Traverso’s previous work focused on the development of novel molecular tests for the early detection of colon cancer. For his post-doctoral research, he transitioned to the fields of chemical and biomedical engineering in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he developed a series of novel technologies for drug delivery as well as physiological sensing via the gastrointestinal tract.
His current research program is focused on developing the next generation of drug delivery systems to enable efficient delivery of therapeutics through the gastrointestinal tract as well developing novel ingestible electronic devices for sensing a broad array of physiologic and pathophysiologic parameters. Additionally, Dr. Traverso continues his efforts towards the development of novel diagnostic tests that enable the early detection of cancer.
Melissa van Dülmen
Münster, Germany
Melissa van Dülmen
Melissa van Dülmen studied life sciences at the University of Münster in Germany. She
completed her PhD in 2022 in the group of Prof. Dr. Andrea Rentmeister at the Institute of
Biochemistry (Münster, Germany). During her PhD, she focused on non-natural
modifications of the 5′ cap to control mRNA translation and immunogenicity. Part of her
work focused on the use of photocleavable 5′ cap analogs to control translation. She is
currently a post-doc at the Institute of Biochemistry in Münster, where she continues her
work on non-natural 5′ cap analogs and their influence on mRNA properties.
Satoshi Uchida
Kyoto, Japan
Satoshi Uchida
Satoshi Uchida, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Medical Chemistry
Graduate School of Medical Science
Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine
Principal Research Scientist
Innovation Center of NanoMedicine (iCONM)
Kawasaki Institute of Industrial Promotion
Dr. Satoshi Uchida received M.D. at the University of Tokyo in 2007 and a Ph.D. in medicine at the Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, in 2013. During his Ph.D. course, he started researching mRNA delivery and therapeutics using polymeric micelles, which provide efficient protein expression in vivo with minimal tissue damage and inflammatory responses. Based on his background as a medical doctor, he undertook therapeutic applications of the system to disease models, including pancreatic cancer, fulminant hepatitis, brain ischemia, spinal cord injury, and osteoarthritis. mRNA therapeutics for osteoarthritis are now proceeding to a pre-clinical stage. Moreover, he developed a novel approach to engineering mRNA by hybridizing functionalized complementary RNA oligonucleotides. This strategy introduces stabilizing moieties to mRNA to potentiate mRNA delivery systems and enhances the immunostimulatory properties of mRNA for efficient vaccination. Currently, he focuses on mRNA vaccines for cancer and infectious diseases. In 2022, he co-founded a start-up company, Crafton Biotechnology, to develop mRNA vaccines and therapeutics based on mRNA chemistry and engineering.
Emily Voigt
Washington, USA
Emily Voigt
Emily Voigt, PhD, Principal Scientist, RNA Program. Dr. Voigt is a cross-disciplinary scientist with 13+ years of expericence in innate and vaccine immunology.
She received her BS in Chemical Engineering from Kansas State University, a PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied the interactions between RNA viruses and the cells they infect, and a postdoctoral fellowship with the Mayo Clinic#s Vaccine Research group prior to joining and aubsequently leading the Acess to Advanced health Institute (AAHI)’s RNA program. Dr. Voigt oversees product-focused R&D of novel self-amplifying RNA vaccine and delivery technologies from discovery through advanced preclinical studies and transfer of vaccine candidates to the AAHI GMP manufacturing, Regulatory, and Clinical Affairs teams.
Amy Walker
London, UK
Amy Walker
Dr Amy Walker received her PhD from the Institute of Child Health, University College
London. She was awarded The Bogue Fellowship and spent time in Prof. Pieter Cullis’ lab in
University of British Colombia, as well as Prof. John Hanrahan’s lab at McGill University.
During her academic career, Dr Walker explored the use of nanoparticles for delivery of
CRISPR/Cas9 for treatment of Cystic Fibrosis. Currently, Dr Walker serves as Director of
Discovery at 4basebio, where she is responsible for advancing the company’s synthetic DNA
and targeted non-viral delivery platforms. Amy authored numerous peer reviewed papers and
is co-inventor on multiple patents spanning wide ranging disciplines.
Wensheng Wei
Beijing, China
Wensheng Wei
Wensheng Wei: Professor of Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, and the School of Life Sciences at Peking University; and the director of Peking University Genome Editing Research Center. The research of Wei group is mainly focused on the development of eukaryotic gene editing tools, with the emphasis on the high-throughput functional genomics and gene therapy. The combination of forward and reverse genetic means are employed, often in a high-throughput fashion, for the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying human diseases, including cancer and infection. Wei group has recently developed a new RNA editing tool, LEAPER, and a novel vaccine and therapeutics platform based on circular RNA technology. Prof. Wei is the founder of two biotech companies: EdiGene and Therorna.
Hani Zaher
Missouri, USA
Hani Zaher
Dr. Hani Zaher was born and raised in Lebanon. He received his B.Sc and PhD from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia Canada. There he worked under the supervision of Dr. Peter Unrau investigating the catalytic properties of RNA. The ‘RNA World’ hypothesis suggests that RNA catalysts should be capable of replicating an RNA genome directly from small molecular building blocks. Motivated to isolated polymerase ribozymes, he developed a novel strategy to isolate an important RNA polymerase ribozyme and study its ability for self-replication. In 2007, he moved to Rachel Green’s laboratory for his postdoctoral studies to study ribosome mechanics. There, he uncovered a quality control mechanism on the ribosome that takes place after peptide-bond formation, which contributes to high-fidelity protein synthesis. In 2012 he accepted a position in the Department of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. His research group is interested in understanding the mechanisms that govern translational fidelity and quality control processes associated with defects during protein synthesis on the ribosome. In addition, his group is interested in exploring the role of the ribosome itself in the translational control of gene expression and in particular how its function is modulated in response to the varying environment. In addition to its role in regulating the translation of the mRNA, the ribosome is critical for ensuring the quality of mRNA is maintained. Indeed, all known mRNA-surveillance pathways take advantage of the ribosome to recognize aberrant mRNAs. His group was one of the first to dissect the role of these various quality control processes in dealing with damaged mRNA. Emerging from these studies is that most adducts on the mRNA stall translation, activating the process of no-go decay (NGD) in eukaryotes and trans translation in bacteria. Furthermore, they recently identified ribosome collision as the signal for NGD.
Bin Zhu
Wuhan, China
Bin Zhu
Dr. Bin Zhu is a Professor in the College of Life Science and Technology at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and a co-founder of RiboTech LLC. He received his BS at the Xiamen University and PhD (lab of Prof. Enduo Wang) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He subsequently completed post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard Medical School with Prof. Charles C. Richardson. His group is interested in the characterization of novel microbial enzymes involved in the nucleic acid metabolism and development of their applications as enzymatic reagents for RNA biotechnology. Novel polymerases and nucleases discovered by his group include the VSW-3 RNA polymerase, KP34 RNA polymerase, Syn5 RNA polymerase, NrS-1 DNA polymerase, and GajA endonuclease. Some of these enzymes have been applied to improve the in vitro RNA synthesis.
Industry sponsored speaker
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 & Manufacturing 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.
Jayesh Kulkarni
British Columbia, Canada
Jayesh Kulkarni
Dr. Kulkarni obtained his PhD from the University of British Columbia and has over 10 years of academic and industry experience in the nanoparticle drug delivery field. He has published over 35 peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals and co-inventor on 14 patents. He has held many awards, including the inaugural Nanomedicines Innovation Network’s postdoctoral fellowship in gene therapy. Dr. Kulkarni’s research has focused on the role of the various lipid components in LNP and the biophysics that governs particle formation. His work has contributed to clinical translation, including scale-up and manufacturing of LNP systems in accordance with GLP and GMP regulations. Dr. Kulkarni is a leader in the design and development of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulations of small molecule and nucleic acid therapeutics. He currently serves as the Chief Scientific Officer of NanoVation Therapeutics, an LNP-RNA formulation developer.
Tim Leaver
Bristish Columbia, Canada
Tim Leaver joined Precision NanoSystems in 2011, shortly after the company was founded. Initially brought on for his expertise in microfluidics, Tim went on to set-up and lead various functions from research and development to operations and commercial. Tim holds a degree in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia and is a graduate of the adMare Bioinnovations Executive Training Institute. He is a co-inventor on various patents including PNI’s NxGen technology. In his current role as Strategy Lead, he is responsible for working with internal and external partners to ensure PNI offers the solutions the field needs to create transformative medicines.
Kelly Lindert
Massachusetts, USA
Kelly Lindert
Kelly Lindert is the Chief Development Officer, Vaccines. She has 20 years of experience in pharma and biotech industries and spent nearly ten years working on vaccines, including pandemic vaccines, at Acambis and Novartis. At Novartis she rose to serve as Head of Development and led the team for the approval of Fluad® and the first quadrivalent cell-based influenza vaccine in the US. More recently she worked at Moderna Therapeutics. She received her medical degree at the University of Chicago and trained in Urology at Stanford.
Julian Mochayedi
Darmstadt, Germany
Julian Mochayedi
Julian is the strategic marketing manager for mRNA solutions and responsible for the strategy development and positioning of the mRNA CDMO offering based on the acquisition of AmpTec GmbH, a leading mRNA CDMO. Prior to joining Merck KGaA in Darmstadt, Germany, he gained experience in translational research with profound expertise in the areas of novel modalities and in vivo gene editing. Julian holds a M.Sc. in bioprocess development and a Ph.D. in translational immunology from Heidelberg University.
Evan Myers
North Carolina, USA
Evan Myers
Evan Myers is the Associate Director of Process Development at TriLink BioTechnologies, where he oversees the development of mRNA and pDNA. Evan has extensive experience in this area, having held various positions in mRNA and oligonucleotide manufacturing, GMP, and process development, where he supported several drug substances. His expertise spans biologics through synthesis, chromatography, scale-up, and process optimization covering development, manufacturing, and analytical testing.
Elaine Peters
California, USA
Elaine Peters
Dr Elaine Peters is Director, Analytical Capabilities Cell & Gene Therapy Technical Development at Genentech. She is responsible for the strategic framework establishing analytical and QC capabilities to support the commercialization of the cell and gene therapy portfolio.
Elaine has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry with particular expertise in analytical development and QC. Elaine holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and an Executive Certificate in Leadership and Management from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Scott Ripley
Uppsala, Sweden
Scott Ripley
Scott Ripley is the General Manager of the Nucleic Acid Therapeutics business for Cytiva, leading the global commercial go-to-market strategy. Scott has over twenty years of experience across research and bioprocess businesses including a recent focus on the mRNA domain.
Ying Tam
British Columbia, Canada
Ying Tam
Chief Scientific Officer of Acuitas Therapeutics, Dr. Ying K. Tam, is a globally respected expert in the areas of nanotechnology and immunology. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Developmental and Molecular Biology from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON prior to his post-doctoral fellowship in cancer immunotherapy at the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver, BC. Dr. Tam has held several academic positions including Instructor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, IL, overseeing the translational stem cell transplant immunotherapy research program. He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia.
Prior to Acuitas, Dr. Tam led a program developing a lipid nanoparticle (LNP), nucleic acid-based immunostimulatory drug. Dr. Tam is a founding scientist at Acuitas and helped the company to become a global leader in the application of LNP technology for the delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics. This includes the development of the LNP carriers used in Onpattro™ and COMIRNATY®, a highly effective and safe COVID-19 vaccine produced through a partnership with BioNTech and Pfizer.
Dr. Tam oversees the scientific program at Acuitas and has guided both internal research programs as well as external programs with partners and collaborators. He has authored more than 75 peer-reviewed studies, including several in high-impact journals such as Nature and Nature Biotechnology, and has contributed to grant applications to secure millions of dollars in funding.
Tadas Trunca
Vilniaus, Lithuania
Emerging business leader with strong product management, business management, strategy and operations experience in Advanced Genetic Therapies (Nucleic Acid Therapeutics; RNA and mRNA therapies) market
Andreas Wagner
Vienna, Austria
Andreas Wagner
Dr Andreas Wagner is currently the Head, Liposome Technology at Polymun Scientific GmbH. He has significant expertise in incorporation and optimization of hydrophilic, lipophilic and amphipatic substances into liposomes and LNPs and development for clinical use. He studied Biotechnology in Vienna, Austria.. Dr Andreas Wagner is listed as inventor on several patents, like the liposome technology and some product patents of liposomal formulations. Furthermore, he has published several peer reviewed articles dealing with liposomes, the technology, products thereof and their application in preclinical and clinical studies.
