Plenary

Stacey J. Adam, PhD, Director, Cancer Research Partnerships, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health

Dr. Stacey Adam is the Scientific Program Manager for Cancer at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH). In her role, she leads the Cancer Research Partnership programs. She is a molecular pharmacologist/cancer biologist skilled in molecular biology techniques, animal modeling, clinical genomics, systems bimarbanology, project and teabonnm management, and strategy consulting. Prior to FNIH, Dr. Adam was a Manager at Deloitte Consulting within the Federal Life Sciences and Healthcare Strategy practice where she supported a number of federal and non-profit client projects. She was the project manager and scientific research advisor for an Institute-wide research strategic planning effort for an institute at the NIH and for a project to develop a novel technology platform to assist a major non-profit agency with combining clinical, genomic, and patient-generated data to accelerate research on chronic gastrointestinal diseases. She also worked for two years with a federally-associated non-profit granting agency as a scientific review officer. Before Deloitte, Dr. Adam conducted her postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Oncology where she was both an NIH and American Cancer Society supported fellow. While at Stanford, she focused on developing better animal models for studying lymphoma and osteosarcoma; performing large cancer genomics screens for genes related to self-renewal, differentiation, and tumor recurrence; merging high-throughput biological techniques with novel cancer animal models to define molecular disease signatures to allow for rapid diagnosis and prognosis of cancer; and working with companies to test novel compounds in pre-clinical trials

Peter Bergethon, Vice President, Quantitative Medicine & Clinical Technologies, Biogen

Peter R. Bergethon, MD is Vice President and Head of Quantitative Medicine and Clinical Technologies (QMCT) at Biogen. He leads the identification of technologies and methodologies that transform drug development. QMCT creates value by leading the transition of clinical practice in Biogen’s core and emerging growth areas from a qualitative to a quantitative discipline, and connecting the Clinical with the Research enterprise, to advance therapeutics and personalized medicine.  Peter came to Biogen in 2017 from Pfizer Worldwide Research and Development where he was Vice President and Head of the Pfizer Innovation Research Lab within the Early Clinical Development group.  At Pfizer, Peter led both the Quantitative Medicine group and the Innovation Research Labs where he pioneered mobile and digital clinical assessment technology, human neurophenotyping, and multi-modal data analytics to accelerate clinical development in neuroscience, immunology, rare diseases, and cardiometabolic disease. He is an accomplished clinical neurologist and neuroscientist who, prior to joining Pfizer, was a Professor at Boston University and Tufts University in the Departments of Biochemistry, Neurology, Neurobiology & Anatomy, and Biomedical Engineering.

Stephen Fawell, PhD, Vice President, Head Oncology Discovery, AstraZeneca

Steve is an oncology drug discovery expert with experience in both small molecule and biologics discovery and development. He has a deep knowledge of both targeted therapies and immuno-oncology agents, with more than two dozen drugs taken into the clinic and supported the approval of Avonex, Angiomax, Farydak, Keytruda, Tagrisso and Lynparza. Steve joined AZ in 2013 as Head of Oncology Drug Discovery with responsibility for target selection, drug discovery and optimization and overseeing biology, pharmacology, DMPK and chemistry resources, a team of 300 staff. He is also the Site head of the AstraZeneca R&D Boston Biohub based in Waltham, MA. Prior to AZ, Steve was Vice President and Discovery Head for Oncology at Merck. During his tenure at Merck, the group advanced 3 novel drugs into the clinic including the anti-PD1 antibody Pembrolizumab (Keytruda). Before that, Steve spent 5 years as Drug Discovery Head for Novartis Oncology in Cambridge, MA, and in this role, he led efforts that resulted in four INDs and supported the HDAC inhibitor Panobinostat (now Farydak) and 15 years at Biogen, forming and leading the Oncology research group there. Steve obtained his PhD at the University of Leeds, UK and completed post-doctoral fellowships at Rutgers Medical School NJ and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now CR-UK) in London.

Jernej Godec, PhD, Associate, Apple Tree Partners

Jernej Godec has been a part of the Apple Tree’s Therapeutics team since 2016 where he focuses on early stage biotechnology investments. He is actively involved with the firm’s company creation and development activities with a recent focus on Elstar Therapeutics, a cancer immunotherapy company working with multifunctional antibodies. Prior to Apple Tree, Jernej has worked with Flagship Pioneering and has over ten years of basic science research experience in T cell immunology and innate immunity. Jernej holds a PhD in Immunology from Harvard University and received his BA with honors in Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California, Berkeley

Peter Henstock, PhD, AI & Machine Learning Lead, Pfizer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterhenstock

Daniel R. Karlin, MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine

Dr. Karlin is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, Industry Transformation Officer at Hu-Manity.co, Director of Biotech Ventures with CEAi and General Manager of HealthMode. He was previously the Head of Clinical, Informatics, and Regulatory Strategy for Digital Medicine at Pfizer, having passed through a number of roles on the way to this position including Senior Director, Quantitative Medicine, Group Lead for Human Biology and Medical Informatics with Pfizer's Neuroscience Research Unit in Cambridge, MA. At Tufts, he had previously been the Director of Psychiatry Informatics, and the Associate Training Director for Psychiatry. He is the Executive Director at Center for International Emergency Medical Services, former Partner in the healthcare consulting company Triple Canopy Advisors, and the Co-Founder and former Chief Medical Officer of Column Health, an addiction treatment startup. His primary research interests are neuropsychiatric drug discovery, medical informatics, cognition in clinical medicine, and methodologies for medical education, especially as these relate to decision-making strategies used by medical professionals. In addition, Dr. Karlin is actively involved in designing and implementing information systems and resources for clinical and research use. Dr. Karlin trained in Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center, attended medical school at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and graduate school for Clinical Informatics and Cognitive Science as well as undergraduate studies in Neuroscience and Behavior at Columbia University. He is board certified in Psychiatry, Addiction Medicine, and Clinical Informatics.

Jason Laramie, PhD, Vice President, Global Head, Translational Medicine Data Science, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR)
Dr. Laramie received his BS in Biology from the University of Missouri, Columbia, his MS in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis and his PhD in Bioinformatics from Boston University.  Dr. Laramie did his postdoctoral training at MGH working on the genetics of Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease. Following his post-doctoral training, Dr. Laramie joined Pfizer where he led a team of scientists utilizing human genomics to identify novel therapeutic targets in diabetes, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases. Following Pfizer, Dr. Laramie joined Complete Genomics where he helped manage, advise and provide analytical support to some of the world’s largest human whole-genome sequence collaborations. Afterwards, Dr. Laramie joined GNS Healthcare where he served on their executive management team building a personalized medicine analytics team responsible for applying cutting-edge machine learning methods to large multimodal clinical trial datasets in partnership with various Pharma and Foundations. Currently, Dr. Laramie is the Vice President and Global Head of Data Sciences for the Translational Medicine Department within the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research (NIBR) division. His team works to apply cutting edge analytics within the clinical trial space to better understand human responses to therapeutic interventions. This work spans biological profiling data, such as proteomic and next-generation sequencing, to connected wearable devices and digital medicine. In addition, he serves on the corporate Digital Leadership Team and as the Head of Analytics for a large Novartis initiative to organize and learn from all of our research and development data.

Jennifer Michaelson, PhD, Vice President, Preclinical Research & Early Development, Cullinan Oncology

Jennifer Michaelson is currently Vice President, Preclinical Research and Early Development at Cullinan Oncology in Cambridge MA, where she oversees the biologics portfolio. Prior to joining Cullinan, Jennifer served as Senior Director and Executive Program Leader at Jounce Therapeutics, where she led the flagship ICOS antibody program, JTX-2011, from inception into Phase II development. Previously, during her 10-year tenure at Biogen, Jennifer served as project leader for several biologics programs in both the Oncology and Immunology therapeutic areas. Jennifer has also been employed as a consultant at Third Rock Ventures for multiple stealth companies. Jennifer received her A.B. in Biology from Princeton University and PhD in Cell Biology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed a post-doc in Philip Leder’s laboratory in Genetics at Harvard Medical School

Ashoka Rajendra, Head, Product, Molecular Biology and Inventory, Benchling

Ashoka Rajendra studied biology at UVA, working on small molecule drug combinations for melanoma and prostate cancer. He has since worked on software platforms for cancer genomics, healthcare, and life sciences. Ashoka is a Product Manager at Benchling overseeing the molecular biology and inventory teams and works with leading biopharma organizations to optimize R&D processes.

Saurabh Saha, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President and Global Head, Translational Medicine, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Saurabh Saha, MD, PhD, is Senior Vice President and Global Head of Translational Medicine at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Previously, Dr. Saha was a venture partner at Atlas Venture where he held leadership positions with a number of its portfolio biotech companies, including as chief medical officer of Synlogic (NASDAQ: SYBX), and as chief executive officer of Delinia until its sale to Celgene in early 2017 for $775M. In 2008, Dr. Saha established the translational research and development organization BioMed Valley Discoveries where he served as chief scientific officer and later president and was responsible for leading the development and demonstrating human effectiveness of two first-in-class cancer therapies. Earlier in his career, Dr. Saha was a consultant in the pharmaceutical practice at McKinsey and Company and subsequently appointed director and head of the New Indications Discovery Unit at Novartis. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed articles and patents (issued and pending). Dr. Saha is on the editorial boards of a number of medical journals and is an associate member and global clinical scholar at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Saha holds an MD and PhD in cancer genetics from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he completed his graduate studies in Bert Vogelstein’s lab. He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and Oxford University, completing the general management program and an MSc in biophysics respectively. Dr. Saha received a BSc in biochemistry after graduating in two and a half years from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

Ed Silverman, Pharmalot Columnist, Senior Writer, STAT
Ed Silverman, senior writer and Pharmalot columnist, has covered the pharmaceutical industry for the past two decades. He previously worked at The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and New York Newsday, among other publications. He won the Gerald Loeb Award for business and financial journalism in 2018 for his Pharmalot View columns. Along with several former Wall Street Journal colleagues, Ed was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist in explanatory journalism for a series of stories on prescription pricing. He earned an accounting degree from Binghamton University and a master’s in journalism from New York University.   

Sybil Williams, PhD, Director, Biology Oncology Discovery, Merck

I am a Director in Oncology Discovery at Merck Research Laboratories, Boston. My team and I lead multiple immunomodulatory and tumor cell intrinsic drug discovery programs in various stages of development, from target ID and validation to the early clinical stage. These programs consist of biologics, small mocnslecule and vaccine approaches. I joined Merck Oncology in 2009 after doing my postdoctoral training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. I received by BS in Biology from the University of Richmond and my PhD in Cancer Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Michael Woo, PharmD, MBA, Head Search & Evaluation, Immuno-Oncology, External Innovation, EMD Serono Research & Development Institute

Dr. Michael Woo heads Search and Evaluation in Immuno-Oncology at EMD Serono.  Michael has broad experiences in business development and drug development.  Prior to joining EMD Serono, Michael served in areas of increasing responsibility in Business Development & Licensing at Novartis Oncology, leading Due Diligence and actively participating in Search and Evaluation for oncology therapeutics.  Before joining Novartis, Michael was leading Due Diligence in the areas of Oncology, Immunology, Infectious Diseases, and Neuroscience in Roche Partnering.  Michael has been an active member of deal teams that have completed deals and strategic partnerships in Oncology and Immuno-Oncology.  Michael has also served on global program teams responsible for the development of small molecules and biologics in Oncology from Phase 1 through Regulatory filing at Bristol-Myers Squibb and at Roche. Michael received a B.Sc.Phm. from the University of Toronto, an M.S.C.I. from Vanderbilt University, an M.B.A from New York University Stern School of Business, and a Doctor of Pharmacy from Wayne State University.  Michael completed his residency at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and post-doctoral fellowships at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Michael is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)

Paul Young, PhD, Executive Director, Business Development & Licensing, Merck

Paul is a member of the Business Development & Licensing team at the Boston Innovation Hub, Merck Research Laboratories. He is focused on search and evaluation of new, external pipeline opportunities for oncology and immuno-oncology, both as single agents as well as in combination with approved cancer therapies such as pembrolizumab. Paul is a leader, innovator, and pipeline builder with more than 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. He has a unique career mix of science, strategy, and business development that has successfully delivered numerous internal R&D programs for clinical development as well as transformational licensing deals with external parties. Paul has deep experience and success both at small biotech startups as well as global pharmaceutical companies. Prior positions include Head of Technologies, External Science & Innovation, Pfizer; Global Head, External Innovation, EMD Serono; CSO, Syndexa Pharmaceuticals; Head of Operations, Oncology Discovery and Science Site Head, Sanofi; VP of Research, Avalon Pharmaceuticals; Research Scientist and Project Leader, Human Genome Sciences. Paul received his BS in Biology from Yale University; PhD in Cellular, Molecular, & Developmental Biology from Harvard University, and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech in Immunology & Molecular Oncology

Leigh Zawel, PhD, CSO, Cullinan Oncology; Executive Partner, MPM Capital

Dr. Leigh Zawel, an oncology expert with significant pharmaceutical experience overseeing large and small-molecule projects, is the CSO of Small Molecules for Cullinan Oncology, a portfolio company of MPM’s oncology-only crossover investment strategy. Most recently, Leigh was Vice President and East Coast Site Head for Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic Innovation where he managed a portfolio of large and small-molecule projects spanning oncology, immunology and rare disease from which five clinical stage programs emerged in five years. Prior to Pfizer, he was the oncology site lead at Merck Research Laboratories in Boston. In this role, he was responsible for drug discovery efforts focused on the identification of development candidates for programs in the oncology franchise. He also formerly held posts at Sanofi-Aventis, where he was Director of Cancer Biology, and at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, where he was an Oncology Group Leader and led the team credited with discovering LCL161, an industry leading IAP inhibitor. He has a deep background in identifying and validating oncology drug targets and in transitioning drug discovery programs through lead optimization to Phase I clinical trials. Leigh has published more than 35 scientific papers. He is also an inventor on 45 patents covering chemical matter, drug combinations, biomarker utility and gene function in areas of apoptosis, inflammation and TGFB signaling. Leigh earned his PhD in the laboratory of Danny Reinberg where he identified and characterized components of the RNA Polymerase II basal transcription machinery. His postdoctoral training was in the laboratory of Bert Vogelstein and Ken Kinzler and focused on dysregulation of TGFB signaling in cancer. Leigh also holds a M.S. in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin, as well as a B.S. in Biology from Rutgers University

Litao Zhang, PhD, Vice President, Leads Discovery and Optimization, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Litao Zhang is vice present of Leads Discovery and Optimization at Bristol-Myers Squibb. She championed the leveraging technology initiative and established a first-rate technology infrastructure to fill functional gaps across research sites at BMS. In the recent five years, she led her team launching numerous technology platforms to address unmet Discovery needs for Immuno-Oncology. These advanced technology capabilities have been used to bridge Discovery, Pharmaceutical Development and Global Manufacture Service supporting IO discovery and IND filing.

Internet of Diagnostic Things

Shawn Evans, Director, Edge Technologies, Valorem Reply

Shawn Evans is the Director of Intelligent Edge for digital transformation firm, Valorem Reply. He has over 20 years’ experience building complex systems across various platforms and technologies in multiple industries. Shawn focuses on business innovation and modernization through AI, Deep Learning, and IoT systems. With a deep-rooted passion for the power of data and connected systems his team at Valorem Reply is developing enterprise IoT solutions that drive competitive advantage and market leadership.

Christopher M. Hartshorn, PhD, Program Director, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health

Dr. Christopher M. Hartshorn serves as a program director at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health. In this role, he manages nano- and passive continuous monitoring-centric research projects, evaluates effectiveness of the programs, and maintains proper stewardship over federally funded research. Furthermore, he serves as a technical expert to extramural programs and participates in development and direction of new research initiatives within the NCI Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis. Prior to the NCI, Dr. Hartshorn worked for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

 

Changchun Liu, PhD, Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering Department, University of Connecticut

Changchun Liu is an associate professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Connecticut Health Center. He received his PhD in Physical Electronics at the Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IECAS), China. He has a highly interdisciplinary background and training spanning Engineering (i.e., electronic, mechanical), Chemistry and Biomedicine. Dr. Liu's research interests include the development of microfluidic chips, BioMEMS (Biomedical MicroElectroMechanical Systems) devices, biosensors, wearable devices and their biomedical applications with a focus on point-of-care (POC) diagnostics. He is a recipient of the NIH Career Development Award (K25) in 2012-2017, the Penn One Health Award in 2015, and the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust Research Award in 2016.

 

Steven Richards, PharmD, Investigator, Biomarker Development, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardssm

 

Ting Shih, MBA, MS, CEO & Founder, ClickMedix

Ting Shih is the CEO and founder of ClickMedix, an award-winning healthcare technology social enterprise born out of MIT to enable health organizations to serve more patients through its mHealth platform. Her areas of expertise include health technology solution design, scale-up strategy, lean/Six Sigma process improvement and organization change management. She spent the last 10 years implementing mobile health programs across 20 countries serving 500,000+ patients in Asia, Africa, South America and North America to deliver financially sustainable health programs through ClickMedix platform. The programs enable health workers and nurses to manage low-cost clinics using an mHealth kiosk that integrates with point-of-care diagnostics devices to provide health services including maternal/child care, primary care, and chronic disease management. The program connects to a global network of remote specialists to provide further diagnosis and treatment advice. The system also enables home visits and community surveys to be conducted easily through mobile smartphones by health workers. Ting has worked with health systems, governments, research institutions, and private corporations to reduce costs of healthcare systematically, while reaching more underserved patients. Ting is Asian American Chamber of Commerce Young Professional of the Year (2018), winner of USAID / DAI Innovation into Action Challenge in 2016, Toyota Mother of Invention in 2015, and she is the Cartier Women’s Initiative Laureate 2012 for North America. She holds an MBA and MS in Systems Engineering from MIT.  In addition, she has a BS in Computer Science and MS in Software Design and Management from Carnegie Mellon University.

 

Yuksel Temiz, PhD, Researcher, IBM

Yuksel Temiz received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in electrical engineering, specializing on VLSI circuit design for MEMS sensors. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2012 from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he developed 3D chip integration and post-CMOS processing techniques for biosensing applications. His work resulted in two grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation and was licensed to a major semiconductor company. Since 2012, he has been working in the Precision Diagnostics group of IBM Research – Zurich. He has co-authored more than 40 publications and 20 patent applications primarily relating to capillary-driven microfluidics, bead-based immunoassays, system integration and packaging, and microfabrication. His current research focuses on innovative microfluidic technologies and portable electronic platforms for point-of-care diagnostics, particularly ultra-miniaturized immunoassays for mobile health applications.

 

Chris Van Hoof, PhD, Senior Director, Connected Health Solutions, Imec

https://be.linkedin.com/in/chris-van-hoof-a0155a4

 

Extracellular Vesicles

Philip W Askenase, MD, Professor, Medicine, Yale University

Dr Askenase has studied immune and allergic disease models for more than forty years and led the Allergy and as Chief of the Clinical Immunology Section at Yale for almost thirty years. He has taught scores of medical students and helped train dozens of physicians in the medical speciality of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.  Notable clinical achievements  have been founding the AIDs Clinic at Yale and participation in the discovery of Lyme Disease (Ann Int Med  86:685, 1977 and Amer J Pathol. 118:26, 1985). His research developed via a thesis at Yale with Byron Waksman, medical house officer training at the Harvard Unit of the Boston City Hospital and post graduate fellowships at the NIH with Edward J, Leonard and Henry Metzger;  then the London Hospital in England with Geoffrey Asherson, and back at Yale with Fred S. Kantor. This research has provided notable firsts and recently the sole awarding of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology Life Time Achievement Distinguished Scientist Award in 2017. 

Silvia De Paoli, PhD, Staff Scientist, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Silvia De Paoli has a Doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Sao Paulo-Brazil. She was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Wisconsin (Madison and Milwaukee, WI) and at the National Institute of Standard and Technology (Gaithersburg, MD). Silvia has spent the past 7 years working for the Food and Drug Administration performing research related to extracellular vesicles, particularly derived from human blood platelets, red blood cells and endothelial cells. She has extensive experience in nanotechnology and biophysics applied to biomedical and to regulatory sciences. 

Raghu Kalluri, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Cancer Biology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Raghu Kalluri was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his B.S. in Chemistry and Genetics, then earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Kansas Medical Center, and then received his M.D. degree from Brown University Medical School. Dr. Kalluri was a postdoctoral fellow and a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and performed research in areas of immunology and organ fibrosis. In 1997, Dr. Kalluri moved to Harvard Medical School as an Assistant Professor of Medicine and as a faculty based in the Department of Medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In 2000, he was named Associate Professor and the Director of the Center for Matrix Biology. In 2006, this program became the Division of Matrix Biology and Dr. Kalluri was appointed the Chief of the Division and promoted to Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He held appointments in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at HMS, Harvard MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute and was a research fellow of the HMS Peabody Society. In 2012, Dr. Kalluri moved to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center as the Chairman and Professor of the Department of Cancer Biology and the Director of the Metastasis Research Center. Dr. Kalluri currently holds the RE Bob Smith Distinguished Chair for Cancer Biology and previously held the Olla S. Stribling Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research and the Rebecca and Joseph Brown Endowed Chair at MD Anderson Cancer Center. In 2015 Dr. Kalluri received the Jacob Henle Medal from the Georg-August University in Germany to honor his contribution to medical research. He is the recipient of several mentorship and teaching awards from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. He is also the recipient of research excellence awards for his work on basement membranes and extracellular matrix as related to fibrosis and cancer progression. He is the fellow of American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Kalluri has published over 287 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Dr. Kalluri has trained 73 postdoctoral fellows, 11 graduate students, and 56 undergraduate students, and fifty-one of his trainees hold academic positions around the world. Dr. Kalluri teaches 1st year core courses for graduate students and medical students. He serves on science and health advisory panels in the USA and European Union and on the editorial boards of several academic journals representing biology and medicine. His laboratory is broadly interested in the study of cell/tissue microenvironment and its impact on cancer progression and metastasis, and tissue injury and repair

Dana Larocca, PhD, Vice President, Discovery Research, AgeX Therapeutics, Inc.

Dana Larocca is Vice President of Discovery Research at AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. Her current research is focused on development of iTR (induced Tissue Regeneration) by re-activating embryonic pathways using genetic approaches and transfer of embryonic progenitor cell EVs. She has over 20 years of leadership experience in the Biotechnology Industry working in regenerative medicine, stem cell research and gene therapy. She founded Mandala Biosciences, LLC in 2008, and as Chief Executive Officer, raised over $3M in non-dilutive funding from SBIR and CIRM grants. She managed a team focused on developing targeted nanoparticle probes for identifying, tracking and manufacturing purified therapeutic stem cells. Dr. Larocca previously held joint positions at Advanced Cell Technology (now Astellas) and the Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute. She is author of 43 scientific publications and inventor of 25 patents and patent applications in the fields of regenerative medicine, gene therapy, and immunotherapy. Dr. Larocca holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Southern California and a B.S. in Biology from Ithaca College. She did her post-doctoral training at Harvard University

Hakho Lee, PhD, Associate Professor, Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Lee is Associate Professor in Radiology at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Biomedical Engineering Program at the Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and 2017 class of MGH Scholar. Dr. Lee has extensive experience in nanomaterials, biophysics, microfluidics, and electrical engineering. His research focuses on developing new biosensor technologies for cancer detection, and has introduced numerous novel diagnostic systems; these include the world’s smallest NMR device, Hall-effect magnetic cytometers, nanaplamonic systems for exosome analysis, and mobile diagnostic devices. Many of these systems have been translated clinical applications

Per Lundin, PhD, MBA, European Patent Attorney, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer, Evox Therapeutics Ltd.

Dr Per Lundin co-founded Evox Therapeutics in 2016, was the company’s first employee and acts as its chief operating officer, with responsibility for business development, intellectual property, and strategy. Prior to Evox, Dr Lundin founded and led IsletOne Therapeutics, a mesenchymal stromal cell company working in the inflammatory disease space. An authorized European Patent Attorney, he has also led business development teams within legal practice and consulting. Dr Lundin holds a PhD from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, an MBA from Stockholm University, and an MSc in biotechnology from Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Maria Mirotsou, PhD, Senior Director of Research, Astellas Institute of Regenerative Medicine

Dr. Maria Mirotsou is the Sr. Director of Research at the Astellas Institute of Regenerative Medicine. She has over 15 years’ experience in the stem cell and gene therapy as well as in target discovery and biomarker research. Her current focus involves the integration of preclinical research, translation, early product development and business strategy in the area of Regenerative Medicine. She is a co-author on nearly 30 publications and an inventor on numerous patents

P Shannon Pendergrast, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, Ymir Genomics LLC

Dr. Pendergrast received his PhD from the Rutgers University Waksman Institute of Microbiology in Molecular Genetics, did his post-doctoral training at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, and has over 15 years of experience in industry as a Scientist, Executive, and Entrepreneur. Throughout his career Dr. Pendergrast has developed cutting edge methods to further our understanding of biological processes. As a graduate fellow in the lab of Dr. Richard Ebright he developed a novel crosslinking method to study protein-nucleic acid complex structure as well as an artificial restriction enzyme capable of cleaving megabase-sized substrates. During his post-doctoral research with Dr. Nouria Hernandez he used cutting edge methods to probe protein interactions on the HIV-1 promoter. As a Senior Principal Investigator at The Archemix Corp he developed a new method to deliver RNA aptamer therapeutics to cells. As CSO of Ymir Genomics LLC he entered the field of Biomarker Discovery and characteristically went right to work developing innovative new methods to improve extracellular biomarker isolation from biofluids. He has published over 30 scientific papers, patents and book chapters and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Circulating Biomarkers

Johan Skog, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, Exosome Diagnostics, a Bio-Techne brand

Dr Skog is the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and founding scientist of Exosome Diagnostics, now a Bio-techne brand. He has pioneered discoveries about exosomes and other microvesicles and their vital role as cell messengers and disease proliferators. While at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, he was the first to show that tumor-derived mutations can be detected in exosome RNA from serum and other biofluids, findings which were published in Nature Cell Biology in 2008. He also pioneered discoveries how these vesicles can be used therapeutically by incorporating gene therapy vectors into microvesicles as a “stealth” vector with changed tropisms (Maguire et al. Molecular Therapy 2012 Feb 7). In addition, he found that exosomes serve to deliver messages to other cells, inducing changes favorable to the proliferation of cancer. Dr Skog has invented several novel exosome isolation platforms that are used clinically (cGMP manufactured). He continues to expand the field of exosome biology and lead critical advancements in diagnostics, including the world’s first exosome-based diagnostic tests that is now helping clinicians and patients

Gyongyi Szabo, MD, PhD, FAASLD, AGAF, FACP, Professor, Vice Chair for Research, Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School

Gyongyi Szabo, MD, PhD is the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research Endowed Chair, Professor and Vice Chair of Medicine and Associate Provost at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  Dr. Szabo is an internationally recognized leader in the field of liver immunology and inflammation. Her clinical investigations focus on alcoholic hepatitis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and viral hepatitis. She is the lead investigator on an NIH-supported multicenter clinical trial in alcoholic hepatitis. Her laboratory studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms of inflammation and innate immunity in liver injury to identify therapeutic targets in liver diseases including non-alcoholic liver disease and NASH. Her investigations recently revealed the importance of micro-RNAs and extracellular vesicles in liver diseases.  Dr. Szabo’s is member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and fellow of the AASLD, AGA and the American College of Physicians (ACP). Dr. Szabo serves on advisory boards of several federal agencies and leading academic institutions. Dr. Szabo is Immediate Past President of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of Hepatology Communications.

3D Cellular Models

Kambez H. Benam, PhD, Assistant Professor, Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine, Departments of Medicine & Bioengineering, University of Colorado

Kambez H. Benam is Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Denver, School of Medicine with a secondary appointment at the Department of Bioengineering. He is the founder of Lung Microengineering Lab at University of Colorado, which brings together researchers from the engineering, biology, biopharmaceutical industry, clinical and business communities with the aim of developing new technologies that recreate complex human organ pathophysiology in vitro, and applying them to discover novel therapeutics and personalized biomarkers. His research focuses on applying disruptive technologies that enable his team to elucidate cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern tissue pathology or offer protection during lung injury and host-environment interaction. Dr. Benam received his B.Sc. (Hons) in Pharmacology from the Newcastle University (UK) and his D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Immunology from the University of Oxford (UK). He then was trained as a Technology Development Fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Dr. Benam has been the recipient of multiple awards including Society of Toxicology IRSS, Baxter and Lush Young Investigator Awards and his work has received extensive press coverage (Fox News, BBC, STAT News, Harvard Gazette, Washington Times, IEEE Spectrum, etc.). He has published in leading scientific journals (Nature Methods, Cell systems, JCI Insight, Nature Protocols, etc.) and is a co-inventor on ten pending patent applications and multiple reports of invention

Choi-Fong Cho, PhD, Instructor, Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Choi-Fong Cho, PhD, is an Instructor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). She is also a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and an Associate Researcher at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She is now leading a research team at BWH to develop blood-brain-barrier modeling platforms, as well as precision medicines for the treatment of advanced brain cancers. Dr. Cho has received many recognitions and been awarded the 2017 BWH Honor Roll for her work.

 

Emma S. Gargus, MD/PhD Candidate, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University

Emma Gargus is an MD/PhD candidate at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in the laboratory of Teresa K. Woodruff. She received her B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, Emma worked in the laboratory of Linda Griffith, developing micropatterned PEG hydrogels for multiple applications, including for perfused 3D culture of hepatocytes for high-throughput drug screening and for analysis of cells found in the peritoneal fluid of patients with endometriosis. At the Ohio State University, Emma leveraged her experience with fabricating micropatterned hydrogel substrates to a study a clinical problem: lung cancer. By modifying the culture substrate for human lung epithelial carcinoma cells, she was able to induce the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), the process believed to be responsible for metastasis. Now in the Woodruff laboratory, her research focuses on the development of novel biomaterials for 3D culture and transplantation of ovarian follicles and understanding the physical properties of the native ovary using emerging advanced microscopy techniques

Nicholas Geissse, PhD, CDO, NanoSurface Biomedical

Dr. Geisse is the Chief Science Officer at NanoSurface Biomedical. He graduated from Boston University with a B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, followed by a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Cambridge University. His postdoctoral fellowship was in cardiac cell and tissue engineering at Harvard University. At NanoSurface, he guides the company’s overall scientific strategy and develops NanoSurface’s next-generation of innovative products aimed at increasing the predictive power of in vitro cell based assays.

Michael Hiatt, Senior Scientist, Bioengineering Research and Development, STEMCELL Technologies

Dr. Hiatt obtained his PhD in Experimental Medicine from the University of British Columbia, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, before joining STEMCELL in 2015. He has worked closely with clinical and academic researchers to develop more physiologically relevant cell models

Hansjoerg Keller, PhD, Senior Investigator I, Musculoskeletal, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

Hansjoerg Keller is a Senior Investigator in the Musculoskeletal Disease Area at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Basel, Switzerland.He studied Biochemistry and graduated in Neurochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETHZ), Switzerland in 1988. During his postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA (Prof. J. Gottesfeld) and later at the University of Lausanne (Prof. W. Wahli), he studied the role of transcription factors in the regulation of gene transcription discovering PPAR nuclear receptors and their activation by fatty acids. In 1996, he joined Novartis leading different drug discovery projects including selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) and sclerostin inhibitors for osteoporosis treatment, and selective androgen receptor modulators (SARMs) against muscle wasting. His current research focuses on exercise-regulated myokines as new drug targets for the development of novel therapies against muscle wasting diseases. To this end, his group is pioneering 3D bioprinting technologies for the engineering of functional human skeletal muscle tissue models for in vitro screening of compounds affecting muscle function such as force, endurance and fatigue.

Vivian K. Lee, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Bioengineering, Northeastern University

Dr. Lee is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Dr. Guohao Dai's lab in the Department of Bioengineering at Northeastern University. Dr. Lee received his B.S. in Bio and Brain Engineering from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology), Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). She is currently under Post-doctoral training in Vascular Tissue Engineering and Brain Tumor Biology at Northeastern University.  Dr. Lee received the Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellows Award, Karen and Lester Gerhardt Prize in Science and Engineering (RPI), Founders Award of Excellence (RPI), also selected as a fellow for IMPACT Program at MIT and Rising Stars in Biomedical: Women 2018

John Lowman,  Business Development,  Mimetas B.V.

John leads US-based business development at Mimetas, from the company's stateside office located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He has a formal background in biomedical engineering, with a concentration in biotech entrepreneurship and innovation. At Mimetas, John coordinates collaborations with researchers at North American pharmaceutical companies, focused on the development and implementation of novel organ-on-a-chip assays.

Graham Marsh, PhD, Scientist, Translational Cell Sciences, Biogen

I’m working at Biogen to develop and build novel 3D tissue models to study neurological disease. My background is in bioengineering and I obtained my PhD in the lab of Richard Waugh at the University of Rochester

Thomas Nieland, PhD,Research Associate Professor, Initiative for Neural Science, Disease & Engineering (INSciDE@Tufts), Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tufts University

Thomas Nieland's research focuses on elucidate the molecular pathways and cellular and neural circuit defects that cause psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. He uses engineering approaches to generate 3D culture models that replicate the complex architecture and function of diseased neural circuits. His multidisciplinary approach integrates bioengineering, material science, organoids, optogenetics, electrophysiology, and stem cell biology with genetics, high-throughput drug discovery and functional genomics, systems biology, and bioinformatics. Previously, Prof. Nieland previously led research groups at Merck Research Laboratories, Stanford University and the Broad Institute with the goal to identify disease mechanisms, targets and drugs for Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons’ disease, schizophrenia and autism. He received post-doctoral training at Prof. Rick Huganir lab at Johns Hopkins University and graduate training at Harvard Medical School and MIT, with a degree received from the VU University of Amsterda

Rachelle Prantil-Baun, PhD, Sr. Staff Scientist, Wyss Institute

Prantil-Baun’s research interests focus on integrating cell biology with engineering in order to enhance our understanding of cellular mechanisms in disease, as well as improving drug efficacy and safety. She has 7 years of experience in the development of cell models and assays for target validation and improved platforms for drug discovery in both industry and academic settings. Her career has focused mainly on the development of better cell models for diabetes and obesity and airway inflammation. Rachelle received a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh

Jianwen Que, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center

Currently I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Medicine in Columbia University Medical Center. I was a medical student in Peking University Health Science Center from 1994 to 1999, and worked as a psychiatrist for about two years after graduation. Lured by the mysterious nature of basic science and stem cell biology I moved to pursue a PhD degree in endothelial stem cell biology in the National University of Singapore (10/2001-5/2005). In 8/2005 I came to the department of Cell Biology at Duke University to study lung stem cells and development under the guidance of Dr. Brigid Hogan. With funding from an independent pathway Award (K99/00) I started my independent career at the department of biomedical genetics, University of Rochester in 10/2010. I have been staying there for about 4 and half years and was recruited to my current institute, Columbia University

Xi Ren (Charlie), Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University

My graduate research was focused on the genetic regulation of vertebrate vascular and hematopoietic development (Blood 115 (26): 5338–5346). Moving from vascular development to vascular engineering, I joined the Laboratory for Organ Engineering and Regeneration at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2012, and became Instructor in Surgery in 2016. During this time, I developed systematic strategies for engineering pulmonary vasculature based on decellularized organ scaffolds (Nature Biotechnology 33 (10): 1097-102; Biomaterials 52: 103-112). I joined the faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 2017. The research in my laboratory works at the interface of biomaterial and stem cell engineering, with the goal of providing regenerative therapeutic solutions to repair or replace damaged tissues and organs. The extracellular matrix (ECM) is an essential niche component that maintains tissue homeostasis and drives tissue regeneration upon injury. We are developing chemoselective approaches for ECM modulation and functionalization to boost injury repair in vivo and whole-organ bioengineering in vitro (Biomaterials 182: 127-134). In parallel, we are developing strategies to model multi-tissue co-development using pluripotent stem cells, with the goal of recapitulating native cellular and tissue-level niches for proper induction of desired cell/tissue phenotypes for regenerative medicine applications. Currently, we are focusing on simultaneous induction of endoderm- and mesoderm-derived tissues

Hunter B. Rogers, PhD Candidate, Ob/Gyn, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University

Hunter Rogers is a PhD candidate at Northwestern University within the lab of Teresa K. Woodruff. He received his B.E. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Auburn University. During his time at Auburn his research interests included green chemistry synthesis of nanocatalysts, development nanoparticle MRI contrast agents, and size-dependent separation of magnetic nanoparticles within a fluidic system. Following his time at Auburn, his research interests shifted to the development of microfluidic systems for reproductive biology applications, specifically in the area of oncofertility. While at Northwestern, he led the engineering team that developed the EVATAR platform, an ex vivo microfluidic model of the female reproductive tract. His current research focuses on high-throughput microphysiological systems, development of a microfluidic model of polycystic ovarian syndrome, and novel contraceptives. 

Alec S.T. Smith, PhD, Acting Instructor, Bioengineering, University of Washington

Alec Smith received his Ph.D. from University College, London in 2012. He now serves as an Acting Instructor in the Bioengineering Department at The University of Washington. His research expertise includes electrophysiology, molecular biology, and tissue engineering, with a focus on muscle and neuronal tissues. His work involves the development of novel 2D and 3D culture systems for assessing muscle and neuron performance, and the assessment of physiological interactions between multiple cell types in vitro.

Remko van Vught, Director, Business Development, Mimetas B.V.

Remko is a biochemist by training and obtained his Master’s degree in Molecular Life Sciences cum laude at the Radboud University Nijmegen. He received his PhD at the Utrecht University (Netherlands) where he worked on the development of functionalized nanobodies (antibody fragments) for cancer therapy. As Director of Business Development, Remko is involved in all business development activities of MIMETAS

Robert Vries, PhD, CEO, Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB)

Robert received his PhD in Biochemistry form the Leiden University Medical Center on a molecular study of oncogenic transformation. He subsequently moved to Stanford University (USA) to do his Post Doc studying neural stem cells. Upon his return to the Netherlands he continued the study of adult stem cells in the group of Prof Hans Clevers at the Hubrecht Institute in The Netherlands. In the group of Hans Clevers he was part of the team that developed the breakthrough technology that allowed the expansion of adult stem cells. The so-called Organoid Technology became the basis of the non-profit company ‘Hubrecht Organoid Technology’ (HUB) of which he is currently the CEO. 

Yu Shrike Zhang, PhD, Research Faculty & Associate Bioengineer, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School & Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology

Dr. Zhang received a B.Eng. in Biomedical Engineering from Southeast University, China in 2008, after which he then obtained a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis (2011) and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine (2013). Dr. Zhang then pursued postdoctoral training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technologies, and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.Dr. Zhang is currently a Research Faculty at Harvard Medical School and Associate Bioengineer at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Zhang’s research is focused on innovating medical engineering technologies, including 3D bioprinting, organs-on-chips, microfluidics, biomedical imaging, and biosensing, to recreate functional tissues and their biomimetic models. In collaboration with a multidisciplinary team encompassing biomedical, mechanical, electrical, and computer engineers as well as biologists and clinicians, his laboratory seeks to ultimately translate these cutting-edge technologies into the clinics. He is an author of >145 publications and his scientific contributions have been recognized by >40 international, national, and regional awards. More information can be found on his website (www.shrikezhang.com)

Ruogang Zhao, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, State University of New York at Buffalo

Dr. Ruogang Zhao is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University at Buffalo.  His current work involves developing and applying advanced biofabrication technologies to create novel engineered tissue models for damaged tissue repair, drug discovery and disease modeling. He received postdoctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University. During his Ph.D. training in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, he won the prestigious Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Doctoral Research Award. He obtained his B.Eng. and M.A.S. both in Engineering Mechanics.

Preclinical Strategies, Models & Tools in Oncology

Rainer Blaesius, PhD, Technology Manager, BD Technologies and Innovation

Dr. Blaesius received his PhD in Biochemistry from the Free University in Berlin. After continuing his graduate work on G Protein Coupled Receptor Signaling in his postdoctoral studies at UNC Chapel Hill, he developed GPCR-based assays for drug discovery as a Senior Scientist at KarobioUSA. Upon joining BD Technologies, he led teams in the development of antibodies for cancer screening and staging assays as well as a novel screening platform for stem cell media. In his present position as Technology Manager, Dr. Blaesius and his colleagues have pioneered the application of Flow Cytometry for Solid Tumor Tissues and Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (BD FACS™) to enable Single Cell Molecular analysis of Solid Cancers

Zhao Chen, PhD, Investigator III, Exploratory Immuno-Oncology, Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research

Zhao earned his PhD from Dartmouth College. He was a translational oncologist specialized in developing and utilizing murine cancer models to better understand tumorigenesis and treatment mechanisms. Zhao is currently leading the mouse modeling efforts to dissect the tumor microenvironment in the Exploratory Oncology Program at Novartis

Anderson Clark, PhD, Director, Translational in vivo Pharmacology, Translational Innovation Platform, Oncology, EMD Serono

No bio availabl

Viviana Cremasco, PhD, Investigator III, Exploratory Immuno-Oncology, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR)

Viviana grew up in the north of Italy and received her master’s degree in medical biotechnology from the University of Milan. In 2007, she moved to Washington University in St. Louis, MO for her PhD training, where her studies focused on the characterization of the signaling pathways activated downstream of ITAM-associated receptors in myeloid cells and osteoclasts during rheumatoid arthritis and bone metastasis. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. Shannon Turley at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for her post-doctoral training, where her research addressed the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing stroma-immune cell cross talk in lymphoid organs. Viviana moved to Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research as an independent investigator in 2015, in the department of Immuno-Oncology. Work in her lab aims at broadening our current understanding of stroma-immune interactions, with particular emphasis on stromal-imposed immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment. 

Paul Diehl, PhD, COO, Cellecta

For over 20 years, Dr. Paul Diehl has been involved in developing, launching, and supporting a range of products for genetic analysis and cell biology in various positions at companies such as Arcturus, Agilent Technologies, Display Systems Biotech, and Clontech Laboratories. As chief operating officer for Cellecta, he continues his efforts to help develop and support new technology for functional genetic screening and targeted RNA expression profiling.

Matthias Friedrich, PhD, Scientific Director, Comparative Biology and Safety Sciences, Amgen

Dr. Matthias Friedrich is a Scientific Director at Amgen Research Munich who has been working on bispecific BiTE® antibody constructs since 2006. Formerly, he was a group leader at the Institute for Biochemistry at the University of Frankfurt and did a postdoctoral fellowship in the Hematology/Oncology department of Weill Medical School of Cornell University, New York, USA focusing on anti-angiogenic strategies in the treatment of cancer. Dr. Friedrich has studied biology at the Universities of Muenster and Cologne, Germany and holds an MSc in Applied Toxicology from the University of Surrey, UK

Mariya Georgieva, PhD, Business Development, ONI

During her PhD at Montpellier Universtity (France), Dr Georgieva focused on developing super-resolution methods to study chromatin conformation dynamics in cells and tissues. As a post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University (UK), Dr Georgieva studied epigenetic regulation kinetics in Embryonic Stem Cells. At ONI she is leading Imaging and Business development

Charles Glaus, PhD, Director, Translational Research & Early Clinical, Takeda

Charles Glaus, PhD is a Director in the Translational Research and Early Clinical development organization at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA. He leads the identification and application of translational quantitative imaging biomarkers to support the discovery and development of novel immuno-oncology and rare disease therapeutics. Charles collaborates across functions and with external research partners to implement preclinical, translational, and early clinical imaging biomarkers to advance Takeda’s innovative pipeline. Prior to joining Takeda, Charles was the Head of the Research Imaging Sciences department at Amgen: an advanced, multimodal imaging laboratory utilizing the latest in imaging technology (MRI, PET, SPECT, CT, optical imaging, radiochemistry, and cutting-edge medical imaging analytics and informatics) to support all Therapeutic Areas, Drug Delivery Devices, DMPK, and Biologics. Prior to joining Amgen, Charles was a postdoctoral researcher at Washington University School of Medicine where he designed probes and methods for PET imaging of cancer and cardiovascular disease and helped establish cGMP production of an immuno-PET radiopharmaceutical at the Siteman Cancer Center. He earned a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine, and a BS in Physics from the University of Missouri

Norman Greenberg, PhD, CSO, Senior Vice President, Therapeutics, Atreca

Dr. Greenberg leads a multi-disciplinary research and development team delivering unique therapeutics derived from the immune repertoires of elite responder patients in multiple indications. Dr. Greenberg previously held positions as Senior Vice President for Translational Medicine at Checkmate Pharmaceuticals, Vice President of Global Oncology Research at MedImmune/AstraZeneca and Senior Director of Oncology Research at Pfizer

Rick Huntress, Director, Commercial Business Development, JAX Mice and Clinical Research Services, The Jackson Laboratory

Rick is a Business Development professional with over 25 years of experience in preclinical in vivo biology. His early research included molecular biology & genetically modified mouse development. That led to the management of studies in oncology, neurobiology, metabolic disease in murine models. At The Jackson Laboratory Rick works with BioPharma companies to execute early drug discovery studies with a focus on target engagement, mode-of-action and drug efficacy in murine models of human disease biology

Andy Hurwitz, PhD, Vice President, Preclinical Research, AgenTus Therapeutics

Dr. Hurwitz received his PhD from The Albert Einstein College of Medicine and did postdoctoral work at The University of California, Berkeley. He initiated his independent research career at SUNY Upstate Medical University and in 2003, moved his lab to the National Cancer Institute (NIH). His laboratory studies T cell responses to tumor antigens using highly relevant preclinical models. The involved the generation and validation of transgenic mouse models to study T cell activation, exhaustion, and tolerance. In 2015, Dr. Hurwitz was recruited to Agenus as Senior Director, TcR Biology. He developed a group that was responsible for biological validation of TcRs. This included both in vitro and in vivo models.  In 2018, AgenTus was formed as a wholly-owned subsidiary of AgenTus dedicated to cell therapy, and Dr. Hurwitz was named Vice President of Preclinical Research. 

Emma Lees, PhD, Vice President and Oncology Site Head, Bristol-Myers Squibb

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-lees

Chad May, PhD, Vice President, Research and Development, Maverick Therapeutics

Chad May leads preclinical pharmacology and development work on Maverick’s novel T cell retargeting platform. Chad has over fifteen years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Most recently, Chad was the Senior Director of Targeted Immunotherapy at Pfizer in the Oncology Research Unit where he spearheaded several bispecific antibody programs. Prior to that, Chad held roles of increasing responsibility at ImClone Systems, which was acquired by Eli Lilly in 2008. During his time there, Chad led several early stage therapeutic antibody program

Adel Mikhail, PhD, CSO, Discovery Life Sciences

Bio coming soon...

Valerio Pereno, PhD,  Business Development,  ONI

Valerio's experience spans the engineering and biomedical fields, with particular emphasis on targeted drug delivery. At ONI, Valerio focuses on identifying new growth opportunities, and establishing collaborations with academia and industry. He obtained his DPhil (PhD) and MSc in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Oxford and MEng in Mechatronics from King's College London.

Elaine Pinheiro, PhD, Senior Principal Scientist, Oncology, Merck

Elaine Pinheiro is a Senior Principal Scientist in the Oncology Department at Merck Research Laboratories. She has led multiple Oncology programs and is a preclinical lead for the pembrolizumab (Keytruda) program. Her current responsibilities also include leading reverse translational efforts to support clinical combination strategies. Prior to joining Merck, Elaine was a group leader in oncology target discovery and validation at the Belfer Institute of Applied Cancer Sciences at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Elaine received her BS in Biology from Carnegie Mellon University and her PhD from the Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine prior to pursuing post-doctoral research at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. 

Fangxian Sun, MD, PhD, Lead Research Investigator, Pharmacology, Sanofi

Fangxian Sun, MD, PhD has more than thirty years’ experience in tumor models. He started his career by publishing “Establishment of a metastatic model of human hepatocellular carcinoma in nude mice via orthotopic implantation of histologically intact tissues” in 1996. Dr. Sun has 20+ years preclinical research experience in oncology/immune-oncology drug discovery. Before he joined Sanofi Oncology in 2010, Dr. Sun worked for Novartis for eight years. Now he is a lead Research Investigator Pharmacology at Sanofi

Juliet Williams, PhD, Executive Director, Oncology Drug Discovery, Novartis

Juliet obtained her first degree in Natural Sciences (Biochemistry) from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Developmental Biology from University College London. After her academic studies she worked for Curis in Cambridge, MA on the first Hedgehog pathway inhibitors. Following her time at Curis, Juliet moved to Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and as a project leader worked on a variety of kinase inhibitors, before moving to Novartis to once more work on developmental pathway inhibitors. Juliet has subsequently worked as a Department Head  at Cancer Research Technology and at Sanofi. She is currently works for Novartis as an executive director in Oncology Drug Discovery.

Yuan Zhang,  Vice President, Business Development,  BD/Marketing&Logistics,  Pharmalegacy

Michael Zhang, M.D.; Ph.D. had over 20 years’ translational research experience both in the areas of cancer, immunity and inflammation diseases in Australia. Dr. Zhang is currently a VP of Pharmalegacy, which is a premier in vivo pharmacology and equipped to obtain higher-quality pharmacological data across a greater number of diseases than any other CRO. Dr. Zhang has helped hundreds of clients with IND filings to both FDA and CFDA (China) for their therapeutic biologics candidates in a variety of immune disease and oncology.

Chemical Biology and Target Validation

Christopher W am Ende PhD, Senior Principal Scientist, Internal Medicine, Pfizer Inc.

Christopher W. am Ende received his B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Delaware, conducting undergraduate research with Professor Neal J. Zondlo designing lanthanide-binding peptides.  Chris then pursued his graduate studies at Stony Brook University working with Professor Peter J. Tonge where he developed long residence time inhibitors of InhA, the enoyl reductase in M. tuberculosis.  After completion of an M.S. in Chemistry, he began his career in the Neuroscience Medicinal Chemistry group at Pfizer in Groton, CT.  In this role, he contributed to several projects across the portfolio, helping to advance a γ-secretase modulator clinical candidate for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.  Concurrent with his work at Pfizer, Chris earned his Ph.D. at Stony Brook University under the direction of Kathlyn A. Parker, completing the first total synthesis of the natural product bisabosqual A.  Chris currently is the Chemical Biology and Exploratory Synthesis laboratory head in the Internal Medicine group at Pfizer.  He has published >40 journal articles, patents and book chapters, as well as presented at numerous external venues.  Chris also serves as a steering committee member of the New York Academy of Sciences Chemical Biology Discussion Group, is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Connecticut College and was named an American Chemical Society Young Investigator

Philip Chamberlain, DPhil, Senior Director, Structural and Chemical Biology, Celgene

Phil Chamberlain obtained his BA and D.Phil. degrees from the University of Oxford before traveling to the U.S. to perform his post-doctoral work at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in San Diego. Phil joined Celgene, San Diego in 2007 and leads the Structural and Chemical Biology department which provides structural, biochemical and cellular data in support of drug discovery projects. Phil is known for his work in understanding and extending the action of cereblon modulators, and has published work in this area in journals including Nature, Nature Chemical Biology and Nature Structural and Molecular Biology

An Chi, PhD, Director, Chemical Biology Proteomics, Merck

Dr. An Chi has been involved in understanding the MOA of therapeutics functional effect in healthy and disease biological system at Merck Research Laboratories, Boston since 2006. Her expertise is in proteomics, system biology and translational biomarker discovery and development. Presently An is focusing on the build-out of MRL chemical proteomics capabilities and data analysis infrastructure to enable target ID/Validation and mechanism deconvolution for phenotypic screens

Robert A. Copeland, PhD, Founder, President & CSO, Accent Therapeutics, Inc.

Robert A. Copeland co-founded Accent Therapeutics in September, 2017 and serves as its President and Chief Scientific Officer.  Dr. Copeland has contributed to drug discovery and development efforts leading to 19 investigational new drugs entering human clinical trials.  He has contributed over 200 publications to the scientific literature, authored 5 books in the area of protein science and enzymology and hold 14 issued U.S. patents.  In 2016, Dr Copeland was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

David H. Drewry, PhD, Research Associate Professor, SGC-UNC, Eshelman School of Pharmacy, UNC Chapel Hill

David Drewry is an expert in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery, with a special interest in protein kinases. For 24 years he worked in drug discovery at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), where he led teams across the preclinical spectrum of drug discovery. His research interests include the art and science of medical chemistry, kinase inhibitor design, utilization of annotated sets of kinase inhibitors to build understanding of signaling networks, and precompetitive chemical biology to facilitate target identification. Since leaving GSK, David became a founding member of the Structural Genomics Consortium at the University of North Carolina. The SGC is a public-private target discovery consortium that catalyzes research in new areas of human biology and drug discovery. The SGC-UNC is housed in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where David is a Research Associate Professor, and his lab continues to design, synthesize, and evaluate kinase inhibitors

Yuehan Feng, PhD, Biognosys AG

Yuehan holds a BSc, MSc and PhD from ETH Zurich and did his postdoctoral research at Stanford Genome Technology Center. He is a co-inventor of the patented LiP-MS technology for small molecule target identification and for the monitoring of protein aggregation and misfolding.

Eric S. Fischer, PhD, Assistant Professor of BCMP, Cancer Biology, BCMP, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School

Eric Fischer, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and a Principal Investigator in the Department of Cancer Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His research focuses on understanding the complex mechanisms that underlie function and regulation of multi-component ubiquitin ligases and their role in disease. Dr. Fischer has been recognized for his pioneering work on the structure of cereblon and the mechanism of action of thalidomide

Stewart L. Fisher, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, C4 Therapeutics

Dr. Fisher is the Chief Scientific Officer at C4 Therapeutics, a new biotechnology company focused on the selective recruitment of targets to E3 ligases for ubiquitination and degradation by the ubitiquin/proteasome system where he is responsible for strategic delivery of the project portfolio and collaboration management.  Prior to joining C4, Dr. Fisher was the Director of Enzymology and Quantitative Biochemistry in the Center for the Development of Therapeutics at the Broad Institute.  His group focused on the mechanistic analysis and quantitative assessment of protein:ligand interactions required for therapeutic discovery.  Prior to joining the Broad Institute, Dr. Fisher spent 15 years at AstraZeneca in the Infectious Diseases Innovative Medicines Unit, where he led numerous antibacterial programs that progressed through Phase I clinical trials and was the Executive Director, Biological Sciences. His department supported the entire drug discovery project portfolio, from target validation to pharmacodynamics modeling in support of Phase III candidates.  In addition, Dr. Fisher spent 2 years at Hoffmann LaRoche leading drug discovery programs in Metabolic Diseases.  Dr. Fisher received his B.A. in Chemistry at the University of Vermont and Ph.D. in Chemistry at Caltech and was a National Institutes of Health Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Medical School with Professor Christopher T. Walsh

Amanda L. Garner, PhD, Assistant Professor, Medicinal Chemistry, University of Michigan

Amanda Garner received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh working under the supervision of Prof. Kazunori Koide and completed NIH-funded postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Prof. Kim Janda at The Scripps Research Institute. She began her independent career in 2013 in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Michigan. Her laboratory uses chemical biology, medicinal chemistry and molecular and cellular biology approaches to investigate the high-risk/high-reward areas of targeting microRNAs, RNA-protein and protein-protein interactions for probe and drug discovery

Erik Hett, PhD, Head of Experimental and Chemical Biology, Merck

Dr. Erik Hett received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in the lab of Dr. Eric Rubin, studying protein-protein interactions important for regulating cell division in mycobacteria. His postdoctoral research was conducted in the lab of Dr. Deborah Hung at Harvard, Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he conducted phenotypic high-throughput screens and utilized chemoproteomics for target ID. He previously was a chemical biologist in the MedChem Department at Pfizer and led a chemical biology team in the mechanisms and pathways group at Biogen. He is currently the Head of Experimental and Chemical Biology at the Merck Exploratory Science Center in Cambridge, MA

Douglas Johnson, PhD, Director, Chemical Biology & Proteomics, Biogen

Douglas Johnson is the Director of Chemical Biology & Proteomics at Biogen in Cambridge, MA. Prior to moving to Biogen, Doug was at Pfizer for 18 years where his most recent position was Senior Scientific Director and Head of Chemical Biology in Cambridge, MA. During his tenure at Pfizer, he played significant roles on teams that advanced several clinical candidates including palbociclib (PD 0332991), a CDK4/6 inhibitor approved in 2015 for the treatment of breast cancer; PF-00217830, a D2 partial agonist for schizophrenia; PF-04457845, a FAAH inhibitor for the potential treatment of CNS disorders; and PF-06648671, a γ-secretase modulator for Alzheimer’s Disease. Prior to Pfizer, Doug was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in the laboratory of Professor David A. Evans. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute under the guidance of Professor Dale L. Boger and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota with a BS in chemistry. He is an author or inventor on 90 publications and patents and is an editor of the Wiley Series on Drug Synthesis including The Art of Drug Synthesis, Modern Drug Synthesis and Innovative Drug Synthesis

Lyn H. Jones, PhD, Vice President, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Jnana Therapeutics

Lyn Jones completed PhD studies in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Nottingham, before starting his post-doctorate research at The Scripps Research Institute, California in chemical biology. In 2001, he joined Pfizer in Sandwich, UK as a medicinal chemistry team leader, delivering multiple clinical candidates in the pulmonary and antiviral areas. In 2011, he transferred to Cambridge, MA to become head of Rare Disease Chemistry and to lead the Chemical Biology Group. In 2017, he joined Jnana Therapeutics in Boston (VP, Chemistry and Chemical Biology). He is an author of >100 publications, a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Society of Biology, and an elected member of the Chemistry Biology Interface Division Council of the RSC

Andreas Koepke, Managing Director, BioExpert on behalf of OmicScouts

https://de.linkedin.com/in/andreaskopke

Milka Kostic, PhD, Program Director, Chemical Biology, Department of Cancer Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Milka Kostic, Ph.D. is the Program Director, Chemical Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical Schools affiliated hospital and research center in Boston, MA, USA. In this role, she supports a vibrant chemical biology program of about 120 scientists, who work tirelessly to develop chemistry-inspired research tools, platforms and strategies, to make new discoveries in basic biology, as well as translate these discoveries into improved clinical practice. Prior to Dana-Farber, Dr. Kostic was the Editor of Cell Chemical Biology and Structure for more than a decade, thus supporting and shaping chemical biology and structural biology communities. Dr. Kostic is a passionate advocate for chemical biology, and its transformative ability to accelerate basic and translational discoveries on the chemistry-biology-medicine continuum. She is also committed to promoting gender equality in society and science, and career development and well-being of early career researchers

Eugen Lounkine, PhD, Senior Investigator I, Chemical Biology and Therapeutics, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research

Dr. Eugen Lounkine studied Molecular Biomedicine at the University of Bonn, Germany from 2003-2007, and since 2007 he has been working on computational approaches to life sciences. In 2009, he graduated in Computational Life sciences at the University of Bonn under Prof. Dr. J. Bajorath. In 2010 Eugen joined Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Cambridge, MA as a postdoctoral fellow focusing on off-target prediction and linking in silico and in vitro activity profiles to clinical phenotypes and adverse drug reactions. Eugen then worked in the in Silico Lead Discovery group at NIBR, and currently in CBT Data Science. There, with his group, he is addressing the question: "What compounds will we use in the next experiment?" This includes focused library design for low-throughput assays, hit call and triage, ligand-based virtual screening, and SAR elucidation

Deepak Nijhawan, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Biochemistry and Oncology, UT Southwestern Medical Center

Dr. Nijhawan is currently an assistant professor of hematology/oncology and biochemistry at UT Southwestern Medical Center.  He obtained his PhD as part of the medical scientist training program in Xiaodong Wang’s lab at UT Southwestern where he helped elucidate the biochemical pathways that govern key regulatory steps in apoptosis.  He completed his residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital followed by a fellowship in medical oncology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.  During his time as a research fellow divided between the DFCI and the Broad Institute, he characterized a class of genomic deletions as vulnerabilities in cancer. He returned to UT Southwestern in 2012 to launch his independent laboratory in the department of biochemistry.  There he has challenged the generally accepted paradigm for drug discovery which is to start with a well-defined drug target and then to use a variety of biochemical, structural, and pharmacological tools to develop new therapeutics. He has undertaken the opposite approach by starting with molecules that have well established anti-tumor effects and using forward genetics/chemical proteomics/and classical biochemistry to elucidate their mechanism of action. Using these techniques, he has pinpointed the molecular targets for two cancer toxins and developed a new class of molecules that selectively inhibits key enzymes in cancer metabolism

Elmar Nurmemmedov, PhD, MBA, Principal Investigator of Translational Neuroscience and Neurotherapeutics, Director of Drug Discovery, John Wayne Cancer Institute, Providence St. John’s Health

Dr. Nurmemmedov’s research is focused on drug discovery in the field of ‘challenging’ drug targets, particularly transcription factors. In the past several years, he has been trained in cancer biology and molecular pharmacology. During his training at Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, he led the drug discovery project at Broad Institute for sickle cell anemia. His training in molecular biophysics and molecular pharmacology contributed significantly to identification of early-stage drug candidates. At The Scripps Research Institute, Dr. Nurmemmedov successfully led drug discovery efforts for beta-catenin, a key regulator of colon cancer. His expertise in molecular pharmacology and protein interaction chemistry allowed me identify lead drug candidates, which are currently being developed for pre-clinical studies. Dr. Nurmemmedov aims to continue his scientific career in molecular pharmacology and drug discovery aimed at cancers.

Andrew Scott, Head, Bioassay Development and Screening, Screening and Assay Development, Concept Life Sciences

Andrew Scott, PhD, joined Concept Life Sciences in November 2017 where he started their Pharmacology Group alongside Chris Doe, Concept’s Group Head of Biology. He currently holds the position of Head of Screening and Assay Development.

Bridget Wagner, PhD, Director, Pancreatic Cell Biology and Metabolic Disease, Institute Scientist, Broad Institute

Bridget Wagner is the director of pancreatic cell biology and metabolic disease in the Chemical Biology and Therapeutics Sciences (CBTS) Program at the Broad Institute, where she is also an institute scientist. Her group's research focuses on the chemical biology of diabetes, with the aim of identifying small molecules capable of increasing pancreatic beta cell number and function and the ultimate goal of discovering new therapeutic approaches for diabetes. She received an A.B. from Harvard College and her Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, working with Stuart Schreiber on developing probe-discovery efforts in an academic setting. Wagner has had an instrumental role in the development of the Broad Chemical Biology Program from its inception in 2003. She is a recipient of the 2008 Type 1 Diabetes Pathfinder Award from the NIH and a Transformative Research Award from the NIH in 2016.

CNS Targets and Translational Strategies

Viswanath Devanarayan, PhD, Adjunct Professor, University of Illinois, Chicago

Dr. Viswanath Devanarayan is currently the Executive Director and Global Head of Statistics & Data Sciences at Charles River Laboratories. He has over 21 years of combined pharmaceutical research experience from Eli Lilly, Merck, and AbbVie. His statistical & data-analytic contributions span a wide range of applications across drug discovery and development, such as target identification, high-throughput-screening, genomics, proteomics, bioanalytical methods, immunogenicity, precision medicine, and exploratory clinical research. He has filed 10 patent applications, given over 100 invited talks at scientific meetings, and co-authored over 55 publications that includes several white-papers with regulatory, academic and industry scientists. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), and is also serving as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago

Dario Doller, PhD, Drug Research Consulting, Alcyoneus/ScienceWorks

Dario’s industrial pharmaceutical career spans over 20 years studying CNS targets. He contributed to an approved drug and several clinical compounds. He edited the new book "Allosterism in Drug Discovery". Dario was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he earned a doctorate in Chemistry. He then carried out postdoctoral work in Bio-organic chemistry with Sir Derek Barton at Texas A&M University

David H. Donabedian, PhD, Co-Founder & CEO, Axial Biotherapeutics

David H. Donabedian, PhD, MBA, is co-founder and CEO of Boston-based Axial Biotherapeutics. Since Axial’s launch in November 2016, David has raised significant capital from top-tier VCs, assembled a renowned advisory and scientific board and established the company as a leader in the gut-brain-axis.

David was a strategy consultant at Accenture and applied his strong foundation in science and business at Surface Logix, where he headed the company’s business development efforts. His ability to develop successful business strategies and help launch innovative ideas led him to GlaxoSmithKline, where he took an active role in the ceedd leadership team. In 2012, he co-founded Alcyone Life Sciences, which is focused on the central nervous system disorders. In recognition of his skill in identifying future trends, he was recruited by AbbVie, where as VP, Head of Ventures & Early-Stage-Collaborations, he led a global team that managed a portfolio of biotech companies and successfully completed multiple transactions including M&A, licenses and option-deals.  David is a Partner of Longwood Fund.  David holds a BA in Chemistry from St. Anselm College, a Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina

Joseph El Khoury, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

No bio availabl

Fernande Freyermuth, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital, Mass General Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases

Fernande Freyermuth, passionate by molecular biology, obtained a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the Strasbourg’s University in France, focusing on molecular mechanisms at the origin of cardiac defects in Myotonic Dystrophy disease. In 2014, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Clotilde Lagier-Tourenne at the University of San Diego, as a postdoctoral fellow and started to investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie the neurodegenerative diseases amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). In 2015, she joined the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston. She was awarded the Milton Safenowitz post-doctoral fellowship from the ALS Association and the Tosteson & Fund for Medical Discovery post-doctoral fellowship from Harvard Medical School to investigate the therapeutic potential of targeting the nucleocytoplasmic transport of the RNA-binding protein FUS in ALS

Daniel Haag, CSO and Co-Founder, NeuCyte

As the CSO and Co-founder, Dr Daniel Haag drives the scientific direction of NeuCyte and leads the development of novel in vitro platforms for drug discovery. He is an expert in neural differentiation and cell reprograming of iPS cells, genome engineering, and in vitro disease modeling of neurological disorders.

Samuel Hasson, PhD, Senior Scientist, Neuroscience, Amgen

https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuelhasson

Jonathan Levenson, PhD, Vice President, Translational Biology, Tiaki Therapeutics

Jonathan Levenson is the Vice President of Translational Biology at Tiaki, where he leads efforts to develop new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease that mitigate neuroinflammation, and novel biomarkers to monitor progression of neuroinflammatory processes. Prior to joining Tiaki, Jonathan led a scientific team at Proclara Biosciences focused on discovery and development of next-generation therapeutics for protein misfolding diseases. Jonathan has over ten years of experience in drug discovery, contributing to a diverse set of programs that include neurodegeneration, psychosis, cognition, cardiomyopathy and metabolic disorders. Before joining industry, Jonathan was an assistant professor and the director of the rodent behavioral core at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was previously a consultant at Saegis Pharmaceuticals and an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine. He earned his doctorate in Biology from the University of Houston and did his post-doctoral training at the Baylor College of Medicine in the Department of Neuroscience. He has authored or co-authored over 60 research publications focused on neuropharmacology and the treatment of neurological diseases

Johan Luthman, PhD, EVP, R&D, Lundbeck

(Per) Johan Luthman is SVP & Head of Clinical Development, Neurology Business Group, Eisai Pharmaceuticals, where he is engaged in programs from preclinical development to LCM studies, with current programs in Alzheimer’s disease & other dementing disorders, epilepsy, sleep disorders and obesity

Arantza Muriana, Co-founder & CEO, Biobide USA                                                                   

Bachelor of Pharmacy and Master degree in R&D&i of New Drugs at Navarra University, also MBA from the San Pablo CEU University of Madrid, where she improved her project management and business development skills. She began working in Biobide in 2006 after a training period in zebrafish biology in the Salk Institute (California). She has worked in clinical and preclinical CROs for more than 15 years. She has experience working in zebrafish for more than 12 years as well as organizing and managing international projects

Shahriar Niroomand, PhD, Senior Scientist, Neuroscience, Merck Research Laboratories

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shahriar-niroomand-abb1a0133

Steven Roberds, PhD, CSO, Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance

As Chief Scientific Officer, Steve leads the development and execution of the TS Alliance’s research strategy through partnerships and conversations with all stakeholders, including individuals and families affected by TSC, basic and clinical researchers, healthcare providers, industry partners, government agencies involved in medical research and other non-profit organizations. In 2015, he worked with program officers at the National Institutes of Health to design and carry out a workshop to update the TSC research strategy for the next ten years. To move this updated strategy forward, Steve drove the creation of two TS Alliance-led collaborative projects: a Preclinical Consortium to accelerate testing of potential new treatments and the Biosample Repository to collect and share biosamples from individuals enrolled in the Natural History Database

Pablo Sardi, PharmD, PhD, R&D Director, Sanofi

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablo-sardi-5b2695b

Greg Warner, PhD, Senior Field Applications Scientist, Quanterix Corporation

Dr. Greg Warner received his Bachelor’s Degree in Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota. Before joining Quanterix in 2017 as Senior Field Applications Scientist, Dr. Warner specialized in the development and support of various biomarker detection platforms at PerkinElmer.

Optimizing Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics

Alison Betts, PhD, Associate Research Fellow, Translational Modeling & Simulation, Biomedicine Design, Pfizer Worldwide R&D

Alison is a member of the Translational Modeling & Simulation Group in the Biomedicines Design department at Pfizer, Cambridge MA. Here she is translational modeling and simulation (M&S) lead supporting the Oncology Research Unit.  In this role she leads a team responsible for using M&S strategies to answer mechanistic questions, validate targets, select optimal compounds, translate preclinical data to the clinic and predict efficacious dose/regimen. Alison’s main area of work is on novel biotherapeutic modalities in immune-oncology including checkpoint inhibitor mAbs, bi-specific T-cell retargeting molecules, targeted nanoparticles and drug conjugates for treatment of cancer

Jayaprakasam Bolleddula, PhD, Director, DMPK and Clinical Pharmacology, Agios Pharmaceuticals

Dr. Jayaprakasam (Prakash) Bolleddula obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, India. After spending a few years in academia, Prakash joined the pharmaceutical industry as a DMPK scientist. He is currently the Director of DMPK/Clinical Pharmacology at Agios Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA. Prior to joining Agios, Prakash worked at Takeda-Boston and Theravance Biopharma. Prakash has published over 40 peer reviewed research articles in pharmacokinetics/drug metabolism and natural products chemistry.  He is also the co-inventor of 12 international patents.  His current research interests are pharmacokinetics, metabolism, and drug-drug interactions of small molecules

Renu Singh Dhanikula, PhD, Senior Research Investigator, Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Dr. Renu Singh Dhanikula, PhD is a Senior Research investigator at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Dr. Singh received her PhD from University of Montreal, Canada. She has over 8 years of experience in pharmaceutical industry in the field of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, with emphasis on application of PK/PD modelling to enable translation of preclinical efficacy and safety to clinic. She is a member of American Association for Pharmaceutical Scientists and International Society of Pharmacometrics. She has several publications in the peer-reviewed journals and presentations in the scientific conferences

Li Di, PhD, Research Fellow, Pharmacokinetics, Dynamics and Metabolism, Pfizer Inc.

Li Di has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical indus­try including Pfizer, Wyeth and Syntex. She is currently a research fellow at Pfizer, Groton, CT. Her research interests include the areas of drug metabo­lism, pharmacokinetics, drug-drug interactions, absorption, transporters, and blood–brain barrier. She has over 130 publications including two books and presented over 80 invited lectures. She is a recipient of the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, the New Jersey Association for Biomedical Research Outstanding Woman in Science Award, the Wyeth President’s Award and Peer Award for Excellence

Andreas Reichel, PhD, Head of Research Pharmacokinetics, Bayer AG

Andreas is Vice President and Head of Research Pharmacokinetics at Bayer’s Pharmaceutical Research and Development. His department is responsible for the DMPK support of drug discovery projects of all therapeutic areas of the portfolio including cardiology, oncology, and gynecological therapy. Andreas received his PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Leipzig studying transport processes at the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in vivo. He did his PostDoc at King’s College London, where he became interested in in vitro models of the BBB. Andreas then joined Discovery DMPK at Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, where he expanded his area of expertise to intestinal and hepatic transport processes and their relevance to drug absorption, drug disposition and drug-induced liver toxicity. Since 2003 he is heading Research Pharmacokinetics (RPK) at Schering and then Bayer with responsibility for in vitro ADME assays, in vivo PK studies as well as all PK and PK/PD modelling activities to predict the PK and the therapeutic dose in human

Wilson Shou, PhD, Senior Principal Scientist, Discovery Chemistry Platforms, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

Wilson Shou is a Senior Principal Scientist, Discovery Chemistry at Bristol-Myers Squibb’s R&D site in Hopewell NJ, where he leads a bioanalytical group providing support for the enterprise-wide high-throughput in vitro ADME profiling effort. Dr. Shou’s research interests involve the application of mass spectrometry, separation sciences and software/automation tools for the high-throughput bioanalysis of small molecules and peptides in support of lead discovery and optimization. He has authored/co-authored 45 journal articles, 4 book chapters, and more than 70 podium or poster presentations. He was the guest editor for a special issue of Bioanalysis focusing on Discovery Bioanalysis in 2012, and also co-edited an ebook entitled “Eliminating bottlenecks for efficient bioanalysis: practices and applications in drug discovery and development” in 2014. He has served on the organizing committee for the annual HT-ADME conference since its inception in 2011, and was the conference chair in 2013

Hao Sun, PhD, Principal Pharmacokineticist, DMPK, Seattle Genetics

Hao Sun is a Principal Pharmacokineticist at Seattle Genetics. He earned his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Utah in 2007 studying cytochrome P450 catalysis, enzyme kinetics, and molecular modeling under the supervision of Prof. Garold S. Yost, before joining Pfizer (Groton, Connecticut). At Pfizer, his research interests included application of structure-based modeling approaches for drug metabolism and drug design, using in vitro, in vivo and in silico approaches to predict human pharmacokinetics and drug interactions. In 2015, he joined Covance (Madison, Wisconsin), where he was responsible for all development DMPK studies and contributed to numerous IND and NDA studies. In 2018, he joined Seattle Genetics (Bothell, Washington) and is currently focused on support of Seattle Genetics’ late stage portfolio including both small molecules and ADCs. He has coauthored 30 publications in the field of drug metabolism

S. Joshua Swamidass, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Immunology and Pathology, Division of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine; Faculty Lead, Translational Informatics, Institute for Informatics, Washington University

S. Joshua Swamidass MD PhD is a physician scientist and professor at Washington University in Saint Louis. His group is funded by the NIH to model bioactivation pathways in order to understand drug toxicity, and how alterations these pathways increase the risk of children to some medicines. http://swami.wustl.edu/

Manthena Varma, PhD, Associate Research Fellow, PDM, Medicine Design, Worldwide R&D, Pfizer, Inc.

Dr. Manthena Varma, PhD is Associate Research Fellow, at Pfizer Inc. Dr. Varma received his B. Pharm. degree from the Kakatiya University, India in 2000, and an M.S. degree (2001) and PhD in Pharmaceutics (2005), from the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and research (NIPER), Punjab, India.  Later, Dr. Varma worked as a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Pharmaceutics, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis). In 2008, he joined Worldwide R&D, Pfizer, Groton, CT.  Dr. Varma holds an Adjunct faculty position in the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Rhode Island. Manthena is a founding member and Instructor for a three-day Annual workshop on “Transporters in Drug Discovery and Development: Driving Knowledge from Laboratory to Label” at University of Rhode Island

Xu Xin, PhD, Director, Pharmacokinetics, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institutes of Health

Dr. Xu has over 20 years of industrial experience and 7 years of government research lab experience in Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK).  She held Senior Scientist and Director level positions at Merck, Genetics Institute, Wyeth, and Pfizer before she joined National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) in 2011.  She earned her PhD degree in Pharmacokinetics from School of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Canada

Tomoya Yukawa, PhD, Associate Scientific Fellow, Discovery Toxicology, Drug Safety Research & Evaluation, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company

Tomoya Yukawa, PhD is an Associate Scientific Fellow of discovery toxicology group at Takeda pharmaceuticals, Inc. He has focused on portfolio de-risking by merging chemistry and toxicology expertise to reduce drug attrition. Prior to joining the group, he was a medicinal chemist and contributed to deliver about 10 clinical candidates and 1 clinical compound (RORgt inverse agonist, TAK-828). He is a principal author of several publications in the peer-reviewed journals and an inventor on more than 10 patents.

Donglu Zhang, PhD, Principal Scientist, Department of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics, Genentech, Inc.

Donglu Zhang received a PhD in Organic Chemistry from University of Utah. His current studies focus on soft-spot metabolite identification to support drug designs and to discovery ADCs. He previously worked for Bristol-Myers Squibb and ARIAD Pharmaceuticals. He edited two books ‘Drug metabolism in drug design and development’, and ‘ADME-enabling technologies in drug design and development’. The mass defect filter (MDF) methodologies he co-invented have been widely used in high resolution mass spectrometry for metabolite identification.

Immuno-Oncology Biomarkers 1: Predictive Biomarkers and Companion Diagnostics

Stacey J. Adam, PhD, Director, Cancer Research Partnerships, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health

Dr. Stacey Adam is the Scientific Program Manager for Cancer at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH). In her role, she leads the Cancer Research Partnership programs. She is a molecular pharmacologist/cancer biologist skilled in molecular biology techniques, animal modeling, clinical genomics, systems biology, project and team management, and strategy consulting. Prior to FNIH, Dr. Adam was a Manager at Deloitte Consulting within the Federal Life Sciences and Healthcare Strategy practice where she supported a number of federal and non-profit client projects. She was the project manager and scientific research advisor for an Institute-wide research strategic planning effort for an institute at the NIH and for a project to develop a novel technology platform to assist a major non-profit agency with combining clinical, genomic, and patient-generated data to accelerate research on chronic gastrointestinal diseases. She also worked for two years with a federally-associated non-profit granting agency as a scientific review officer. Before Deloitte, Dr. Adam conducted her postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Oncology where she was both an NIH and American Cancer Society supported fellow. While at Stanford, she focused on developing better animal models for studying lymphoma and osteosarcoma; performing large cancer genomics screens for genes related to self-renewal, differentiation, and tumor recurrence; merging high-throughput biological techniques with novel cancer animal models to define molecular disease signatures to allow for rapid diagnosis and prognosis of cancer; and working with companies to test novel compounds in preclinical trials.

Carrie Sougnez Cibulskis, PhD,  Director, Somatic Portfolio,  The Broad Institute

Carrie Cibulskis is the Director of Somatic Portfolio Product Development at the Broad Genomics Platform. Carrie has over 20 years of experience in genomics analysis and served as project leader for the Broad Institute's participation in The Cancer Genome Atlas. 

 

Adil Daud, MD, Professor, Hematology/Oncology, University of California, San Francisco; Director, Melanoma Clinical Research, UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center

Dr. Daud has extensive experience in translational research and clinical trial design, especially in melanoma. His post-doctoral fellowships were at Cleveland Clinic and Indiana University, respectively, working in basic science labs on fundamental biologic processes. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, he trained with Drs. David Spriggs, Carol Aghajanian and Paul Chapman, gaining a broad understanding of experimental therapeutics. Over the next 7 years, at the Moffitt Cancer Center, he designed and conducted numerous Phase I and II clinical trials collaborating with his colleagues Drs. Richard Heller, Richard Jove, Hua Yu, Dmitry Gabrilovich, Timothy Yeatman, Pamela Munster and Daniel Sullivan, many with first-in-man or novel compounds and mostly in patients with melanoma. One of his collaborations has been with Dr. Heller who had observed dramatic activity of plasmid IL-12 EGT in the B16 mouse melanoma model. At UCSF, he lead the melanoma program and several early phase and melanoma specific clinical trials collaborating with his colleagues Michael Rosenblum, Jeffrey Bluestone, Lawrence Fong, Matthew Krummel, Boris Bastian, Rosemary Akhurst, Susana Ortiz as well as others outside UCSF such as Paul Tumeh at UCLA and Robert Pierce at OncoSec to develop new agents for this disease.

 

Benoit Destenaves, PharmD, Director, Diagnostics Lead, Precision Medicine and Genomics, Innovative Medicines and Early Development (IMED) Biotech Unit, AstraZeneca

Benoit Destenaves has 18 years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry specializing in the analysis of molecular biomarkers. Benoit started his career in 1999 working for Genset, a French Biotech company that specialized in pharmacogenomics. He then worked for Serono/Merck Serono where he held positions of increasing responsibility linked to precision medicine in oncology, endocrinology and fertility. He joined AstraZeneca in 2013 to lead the dolecular diagnostics labs and Pharmacogenomics group within the Precision Medicine and Genomics Function where he developed the group’s focus on novel approaches (ctDNA, NGS) for companion diagnostics. In his current role, he leads strategic diagnostic projects and precision medicine approaches at AstraZeneca.

Fritz Eibel, Senior Vice President, MolecularMD

Fritz Eibel brings more than two and a half decades of broad-based in vitro diagnostics and life science experience focused primarily on new and emerging growth opportunities. At MolecularMD he is responsible for the company’s marketing strategy and management, new product launch and commercialization, and development of joint ventures, affiliations and partnerships that support long-term growth.

 

Keith Flaherty, Director, Clinical Research, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center

Dr. Flaherty is Director of Clinical Research at MGH and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  He made seminal observations that defined treatment of melanoma by establishing the efficacy of BRAF, MEK, and combined BRAF/MEK inhibition in patients with metastatic melanoma. Dr. Flaherty serves as ECOG Chair of Developmental Therapeutics Committee and Deputy Chair for Biomarker Science, NCI Board of Scientific Advisors, AACR Board of Directors, and editor-in-chief of Clinical Cancer Research.

Samir Hanash MD, PhD, Director, McCombs Institute for Cancer Early Detection and Treatment, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Dr. Hanash’s interests and expertise focus on the development and application of integrated approaches to the molecular profiling of cancer, with particular emphasis on the development of blood-based markers to identify subjects at increased risk of developing or harboring cancer and for tumor classification and monitoring response to treatment. 

Nikola Hunter, Principal Scientist, Translational Biology, Concept Life Sciences

No bio available

Sema Kurtulus, PhD, Investigator II, Translational Immuno-Oncology, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sema-kurtulus-70409364

 

Amanda Lowe, Managing Director, Visiopharm Corporation

Amanda Lowe is the Managing Director of Visiopharm Corporation and responsible for the overall organization and operations within the America's. Amanda began her career in digital pathology and image analysis in 2004 and is a graduate of Michigan State University and the Eli Broad School of Business.

David L. Rimm, MD, PhD, Professor of Pathology and of Medicine (Medical Oncology); Director of Pathology Tissue Services; Director of Translational Pathology, Yale University School of Medicine

Dr. David Rimm is a Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Medicine (Oncology) at the Yale University School of Medicine.  He is the Director of Yale Pathology Tissue Services.  He completed an MD-PhD at Johns Hopkins University Medical School followed by a Pathology Residency at Yale and a Cytopathology Fellowship at the Medical College of Virginia.  He is boarded in Anatomic and Cytopatholgy.  His research lab group focuses on quantitative pathology using the AQUA® technology invented in his lab, and other quantitative methods, with projects related to predicting response to both targeted and immune- therapy in cancer and standardization of those assays for CLIA labs.  His lab is involved in testing new high-plex methods including imaging mass cytometry (Fluidigm) and digital spatial profiling (NanoString) He also has supported projects related to rapid, low cost diagnostic tests and direct tissue imaging. The work is supported by grants from the NIH, BCRF, and sponsored research agreements from biopharma.  He also serves on the CAP Immunohistochemistry committee and multiple scientific advisory boards for biotech and pharma.  He is an author of over 350 peer-reviewed papers and 8 patents.

 

Vanessa Tumilasci, PhD, Commercial Director, Trans-Hit Biomarkers

Dr. Vanessa Tumilasci holds an MSc. degree in Biotechnology from Sao Paulo University (Brazil) and a PhD in Microbiology & Immunology from McGill University (Montreal, Canada).  Vanessa joined THB in 2016 to manage biospecimen procurement and is instrumental in the formation of new partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and biorepositories and plays an active role in corporate development initiatives.

Michael Vishnevetsky, PhD, Head, Global Business Development, Invivoscribe

Dr. Vishnevetsky joined Invivoscribe in 2018 as the Head of Global Business Development. In this role he leads Invivoscribe’s woldwide business development efforts with focus on Pharma engagement and companion diagnostics (CDx) test development. Prior to joining Invivoscribe, Dr. Vishnevetsky held business development positions at Pacific Biosciences and Thermo Fisher Scientific with focus on utilization of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) for diagnostics of rare diseases and clinical oncology.

Jianda Yuan, MD, PhD, Senior Director, Translational Oncology, Merck

Dr. Yuan graduated from Shanghai Medical University, China.  He established and led the translational biomarker research at Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the past decade. He recently joined the Early Oncology Development group at Merck & Co., Inc. to continue leading translational immuno-oncology research. His research interest is translational medicine and biomarker discovery for immune checkpoint blockade immunotherapy with approximately 70 peer-reviewed articles, including publication in Science, NEJM, Nature Medicine, Nature Immunology, PNAS, Blood, Journal of Immunology, Clinical Cancer Research and Journal Immunotherapy of Cancer.  He and his collaborators had first reported absolute lymphocyte counts (ALC), the change of CD8+ T cells in peripheral blood,  CD4+ICOShi T cell,  integrated polyfunctional NY-ESO-1 antigen specific immune response,  myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSC),  VEGF  and the tumor mutation load as potential biomarkers for  advanced melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer patients  treated with the  immune checkpoint inhibitors. He is a member of SITC, AACR and ASCO. Dr. Yuan is an Associate Editor of the Journal Immunotherapy of Cancer. He served as a Member of the steering committee for the CRI-CIC, Co-Chair of Biomarker Discovery of the World Immunotherapy Council. Current he is the group Chair of the SITC Biomarker Task Force.

 

George Wei, PhD, Vice President, Research & Development, ACT Genomics

Dr. George Wei started his scientific career at US FDA after college. He then continued to pursue his interest in drug development at Roche Pharmaceuticals after a Ph.D. training at Princeton University. In 2009 Dr. Wei joined Gilead Sciences as the immunologist for its new HIV Cure program. He later on returned to Taiwan and assumed several key positions before joining ACT Genomics as VP of R&D Division.

Glen J. Weiss, MD, MBA, Director, Phase I Clinical Research, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston/Harvard Medical School

Dr. Weiss is a medical oncologist and Director of Phase I Clinical Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is also faculty at Harvard Medical School and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Arizona School of Medicine-Phoenix. Dr. Weiss has already completed numerous clinical trials with investigational agents, several of which have already gone on to receive FDA approval for certain cancers.

 

Clinical and Translational Biomarkers

Elnaz Atabakhsh, PhD, Senior Product Manager, Multiplex Assays, Abcam

Elnaz is the Senior Product Manager for Multiplex Assays at Abcam; she is responsible for shaping the vision for product development, commercialization, and collaboration projects related to the multiplex assays portfolio. Talk to her to find out more about how the high-throughput immunoassay FirePlex-HT can accelerate your research and drug discovery.

Sean Downing, PhD, MBA, Director of Customer Engagement, Ultivue

Sean has implemented pathology workflows at several companies in work spanning both proteomics and genomics. Prior to Ultivue, he established and ran PerkinElmer’s CRO laboratory offering a menu of TSA-based staining services. Previously, Sean was one of the principal inventors of the first to market, pan-cancer NGS test at Foundation Medicine. He was a post-doc and junior faculty member at Harvard Medical School with appointments at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital.

Nicholas Dracopoli, PhD, Strategic Advisor, Mission Bio

Speaker bio coming soon...

David Duffy, PhD, CTO, Quanterix Corporation

Dr. David Duffy is Chief Technology Officer at Quanterix, where he leads development of the company’s single molecule detection technology.  He is an inventor on 12 U.S. patents and has authored more than 20 publications on surface chemistry, microfluidics, and bioanalysis. Prior to Quanterix, David directed Pharmacomer Technology at Surface Logix and co-invented a centrifugal microfluidic at Gamera Biosciences. Dr. Duffy holds a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Cambridge.

Margot El-Khouri, PhD, Immunology Sales Specialist, Sales, ProImmune Ltd.

Margot El-Khouri specialised in Immunology at the Pasteur Institute of Paris and gained an MSc degree from the Université Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris VI). She then did her PhD in Cancer Oncolytic Virotherapy and Immunotherapy at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London. Margot joined the ProImmune team as an Immunology Sales Specialist in 2016. She enjoys providing customers from all around the world with solution-oriented support for the immunogenicity approach of their preclinical and clinical research.

Abdel B. Halim, PharmD, PhD, DABCC-CC, DABCC-MD, DABCC-Tox, Vice President, Translational Medicine, Biomarkers & Diagnostics, Celldex Therapeutics

Dr. Abdel Halim is an internationally-recognized key opinion leader with 25+ years of experience in different aspects of biomarkers, precision medicine and IVD; from strategic planning to actualization. Dr. Halim held multiple leadership positions in the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industries.  He oversaw the development and validation of assays for several hundreds of biomarkers on different platforms and their applications in 120+ PI-PIV clinical trials and patient managements. Abdel has led 7 CDx programs and has track records for 5 FDA 510K approvals of high complexity IVD and 2 drug approvals.  He has served on 20+ governmental and public expert panels and advisory boards in the US, Canada and EU. Dr. Halim has been nominated on 25+ committees to establish guidelines promoting quality in clinical laboratory and diagnostic industries.  Abdel published 70+ peer-reviewed articles, drafted a full reference book on biomarkers and precision medicine, and presented at 100+ national and international meetings.

Vaios Karanikas, PhD, Biomarker Experimental Medicine Leader, Oncology, Roche
Vaios completed his training in Immunology at Monash University, Melbourne Australia. After completing postdoctoral fellowships at the Austin Research Institute (Melbourne) and Ludwig Institute for Cancer research (Brussels), he led and directed his own labs at the Austin Research Institute in Melbourne and the Cancer Immunology Unit of the University of Thessaly in Greece. He was a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Melbourne and Associate Professor of Cellular Biology/Immunology at the University of Thessaly, Greece. As a cancer immunologist, Vaios has more than 20 years of experience in the exploration, design and implementation of cancer immunotherapeutic candidates. He has a strong track record in immunology, cell biology and mechanisms of disease, both in academia, private research organizations and biopharmaceutical companies leading up to Phase II clinical trials.
Since September 2011, Vaios joined Roche at the RICZ as a BEML. He leads cutting edge programs from early clinical development to Ph2 of compounds engaging immune effector cells. In these programs he generates both compound- and franchise-specific biomarker and PHC development plans, contributing to the overarching strategy and vision of Roche. Vaios has received numerous awards, competitive international funding and authored several papers in the field of cancer immunotherapy

Mireia Fernandez Ocana, PhD, Global Biomarker Lead, Drug Safety, Pfizer

Dr. Mireia Fernandez Ocaña is the Biomarker Discovery Lead in Pfizer’s Drug Safety Department responsible for delivering innovative biomarker LC-MS/MS solutions to support safety and translational investigations. One of the core expertises of her and her team is the sensitive quantification of protein biomarkers by immunoaffinity LCMS techniques. After joining Pfizer in 2007, Mireia held various roles focused on mass spectrometry in Pharmacokinetics, Dynamics & Metabolism, Structural Biology and Translational Pharmacology. Prior to that Mireia held a Postdoctoral position at King’s College London in the UK and received her Ph.D. from the University of London. She obtained her degree in Chemistry from the University of Barcelona, Spain.

Brian Neman, CEO, Sanguine Biosciences

Brian Neman is the Founder and CEO of Sanguine, having founded the company in 2010 with the vision of doing whatever possible to help patients accelerate research for their condition. To date, the company has completed 500+ research studies with 20+ of the top 40 pharmaceutical companies.

Balaji Panchapakesan, PhD, Professor, Founding Director, Small Systems Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Dr. Balaji Panchapakesan is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA. He invented the Nanotube-CTC-Chip. He has published over 100 articles in leading journals and conferences. His interests are in enabling nanoscience for a wide variety of applications including the capture of circulating biomarkers for precision oncology.

 

Michael Patel, PharmD, Fellow, Biomarker Development, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

Michael Patel is a fellow in Biomarker Development, Translational Medicine at Novartis. There he is involved with study level coordination of biomarkers across therapeutic areas as well as evaluating and developing technologies with potential to improve clinical biomarker logistics and analysis. He is especially interested in finding new and innovative ways to generate robust clinical data in ways that reduce patient burden. Michael holds a PharmD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Deborah Shepard, PhD, Senior Manager, Biomarker Assay Specialist, Early Development, Translational and Immuno-Oncology, Global Product Development, Pfizer
Deborah Shepard, PhD, is a Senior Manager, Biomarker Assay Specialist in the Oncology Clinical Assay Group in Global Product Development at Pfizer. She is responsible for scientific technical oversight and operational management of external and internal partners performing clinical trial biomarker sample analyses aligned with translational oncology strategies. Prior to joining Pfizer in 2015, she held positions of increasing responsibility in project management, lab management, and data management at Quintiles. Deborah holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin at Madison

Sean Walsh, PhD, CSO, Oncoradiomics

Seán is a medical physicist with key expertise in data science and a decade of experience in the fields of radiology and radiotherapy. He has a proven track record of managing patient data from multiple international cancer centers throughout the world computer assisted theragnostics network. Seán is primarily advising on clinical and pre-clinical research strategy, along with the data warehousing, while supporting the machine learning and signature progression of RadiomiX.

 

Tammie Yeh, PhD, Associate Director, Oncology Translational Sciences, AstraZeneca

Tammie Yeh is an Associate Director in the Early Oncology Translational Medicine organization at AstraZeneca, where she oversees the development and implementation of clinical biomarker strategies for several Phase I Oncology trials. Prior to AstraZeneca, she was the Oncology lead within the cross-indication Molecular Biomarkers department at Merck Research Laboratories and also oversaw the Oncology biomarkers laboratory group which was focused on clinical assay development. Prior to AstraZeneca, she was at Array BioPharma where she had multiple roles ranging from developing cellular and whole blood-based assays, working directly with clinical samples and clinical sites, and serving as the biology and translational lead for multiple programs which transitioned from research to clinical development.  Tammie received her B.A. from University of California, Berkeley, her Ph.D. at Stanford University and did her post-doctoral work at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. She has more than 17 years of experience in the drug discovery industry, most of them focused on Translational work.

 

Xuemei Zhao, PhD, Senior Principal Scientist, Translational Molecular Biomarkers, Merck Research Labs

Xuemei is currently a Senior Principal Scientist in the Translational Molecular Biomarkers Department at Merck & Co., Inc. in Rahway, NJ. She received her PhD in Chemistry from Columbia University and performed her postdoctoral research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Afterwards, Xuemei joined the Proteomics Department in Molecular Profiling at Merck in 2004. She led the biochemistry group focusing on sample preparation for LC-MS based proteomics profiling for biomarker discovery and new target identification.  In 2012, Xuemei transitioned to clinical biomarker development. Currently, she leads the immunoassay group focusing on clinical biomarker assay development, validation, and implementation to support drug development clinical studies across all disease areas at Merck.

Digital Health: Pharmaceutical Executive Summit

Tomasz Adamusiak, MD, PhD, Director, Medical Informatics Lead, Digital Medicine & Translational Imaging, Pfizer

As Director of Medical Informatics at Pfizer, Dr Tomasz Adamusiak is responsible for leading the development and execution of the medical informatics strategy for Digital Medicine & Translational Imaging (DM&TI) group within the Early Clinical Development (ECD) division, working closely with technical and clinical experts, as well as with the Data Science team in the Pfizer Innovation Research (PfIRe) Lab. Dr Adamusiak served in leadership and advisory roles in the American Medical Informatics Association and the SNOMED International.

 

Adrian Chernoff, Former Worldwide Vice President, Global Head of Research and Development, Johnson and Johnson

Adrian Chernoff, B.S.M.E., M.B.A., M.E.M.E. is a visionary technologist and digital transformation executive who helps companies create and deliver what comes next. Honored with 20 awards and 90 patents, he routinely solves critical business problems to deliver game-changing products and first-to-market solutions. Distinguished career encompasses 20+ years of leading innovation, fostering collaboration, building new capabilities, leveraging insights from other industries, influencing change and introducing new products and services within companies, across industries and around the world. An experienced builder and strategist of new digital platforms, patient-centric mobile apps and smarter medical devices that empower millions of patients and improve patient outcomes. As Worldwide Vice President, Global Head of R&D, Digital and Innovation for the Johnson and Johnson $2B Diabetes Care Companies he launched IoT connected medical devices, deployed a digital health platform ecosystem and introduced the #1 diabetes app in the U.S. and available in 20 countries with over 1M downloads to help patients better manage their diabetes. As Vice President of Digital Strategy and Product Transformation at Broadridge Financial Solutions, he spearheaded digital transformation efforts to improve investor communications for over 100M investors by building an omni-channel digital delivery system and creating a software-as-a-service (SAAS) platform for personalizing customer experiences to increase assets under management, improve operating efficiencies and reduce operating costs. As a Strategic Consultant at Ideation Genesis, he advises CEO’s and executives in digital technology and innovation to accelerate product development and differentiate product offerings. As a Director of Worldwide Marketing at Kodak, overseeing P&L for a $200M portfolio, he launched a family of consumer digital products with new technology and design advancements to achieve double-digit growth. As the Chief Product Architect at General Motors for Reinventing the Automobile, he pioneered a revolutionary vehicle platform to improve the customer experience and simplify design, engineering and vehicle manufacturing to enable and introduce electric and autonomous vehicles with software advancements currently utilized in Tesla and Chevrolet vehicles.

 

Jessilyn Pearl Dunn, PhD, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering and Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Duke University

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessilyn-dunn-82803438/

 

Mohanad Fors, MBA, Co-Founder, Global Head of Biome - The Digital Innovation Lab by Novartis

Mohanad Fors is the head of Biome the digital innovation lab by Novartis. He is leading the externally focused digital innovation hubs in different locations in the world including Silicon Valley focusing on HealthTech innovation. He has more than twelve years of experience in sales, marketing and digital marketing experience with global, emerging markets, Europe and the Middle East. Mohanad is the founder of successfully exited start-ups with strong knowledge in the start-up community. He won different global awards including the European Excellence, Clio and Cannes Lions awards for different innovative projects like the first navigation application for visually impaired patients that is available on smart watches.

 

Bert Hartog, PhD, Senior Director, Clinical Innovation, Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V.

Dr. Bert Hartog is currently Innovation Leader at Janssen R&D Operations, where he leads transformational innovation projects that have the goal to shape the future of clinical trial execution at Janssen and position Janssen as a role model in patient-centered clinical research. Bert is a professional in the pharmaceutical industry, with 20+ years’ experience in Clinical Operations, QA, IT and Project Management. He started his career with a Masters in Biomedicine from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, as CRA with Eli Lilly. During this time, he completed his PhD in Medicine at Utrecht University. In 1998, he moved to London to start work as head of Medical Quality Assurance with responsibilities for the EMEA region. In this role, he introduced risk self-assessment tools for local clinical operations departments. In 2001 he became IT manager at Lilly’s R&D site in the UK. In this role, he established a PMO and got deeply involved in project management. In 2005 he left the UK to start work at Johnson & Johnson from Belgium; first in corporate IT & compliance where Sarbanes-Oxley was first introduced. In 2008 he returned to his passion in clinical research, as Director Clinical R&D with Janssen, where he led the clinical operations departments in the Benelux and Nordic countries for 4 years. With this experience, he joined a large transformation program at Janssen’s clinical development operations. His responsibilities included the introduction of a new CTMS and a next generation eTMF solution, as well as setting up a new business function to own these technical capabilities. Since summer 2015 he has become part of the Janssen R&D Operations Innovation team.

 

Kamal Jethwani, MD, MPH, Senior Director, Pivot Labs, Partners HealthCare; Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School

As the Senior Director of Connected Health Innovation at Partners HealthCare, Dr. Jethwani is responsible for leading a multidisciplinary team to identify and solve challenges in health care delivery using innovative technology-based solutions. As an organization that is embracing value-based reimbursement across all care settings, his solutions enable improved outcomes by making care delivery a continuous function of patients’ lives. His team is engaged in needs assessments across the system, product development and evaluations, as well as rigorous research to prove the value and outcomes of using connected health solutions. These innovations are routinely scaled within clinical practices at Partners and made part of the usual care provided to patients. The core focus of his research is in enabling better care delivery through connected health programs, by enabling better patient engagement, patient-provider communication, and patient satisfaction with care. His research so far has shown that programs that are personalized to each patient’s unique psychology and needs can result in better engagement, and in turn better outcomes. He continues to develop analytic and programmatic modalities to improve our understanding of personalization concepts to connected health. Dr. Jethwani has worked extensively with sensor technology, wearables, mobile as well as social media to deliver care to our patients. The ability to personalize care and understand behavioral motivations that dictate health choices remains central to all his work at Partners HealthCare.

 

Pierre Leurent, CEO, Voluntis

Pierre is the founder and CEO of Voluntis, a digital therapeutics company focused on medication therapy optimization. Based on the Theraxium platform, Voluntis digital companions empower people to self-manage their treatment in remote collaboration with their healthcare teams, notably in diabetes and oncology. Pierre has 19 years of experience in the digital health sector in Europe and the US. He previously worked at GE Medical Systems and Healthcenter Internet Services. He is the coordinator of eHealth France Alliance, which represents companies active in the digital health space in France. Pierre holds an MS in Computer Science from Ecole Centrale Paris.

 

Christian Theil Lundgaard, Director, Digital Health Partnerships & Commercial Strategy, Novo Nordisk

Christian Theil Lundgaard is a Director of Digital Health in Novo Nordisk, a world leader in diabetes. Christian’s team is responsible for developing partnerships to support the digital health efforts, launching digital health solutions globally and generating insights from the gathered real-world evidence.

 

David O’Reilly, Chief Platform Officer, Proteus Digital Health

David O’Reilly is Chief Platform Officer of Proteus Digital Health and leads the company’s Digital Medicine development, manufacturing, corporate development and corporate strategy areas. Prior to joining Proteus, David spent over 15 years starting and building life sciences companies focused on novel platforms for drug discovery and personalized medicine. He was President of Catalyst Biosciences, Chief Business Officer and member of the founding management team at Iconix Biosciences, and Head of Corporate Development for ARIAD Pharmaceuticals (where he was also the general manager of a subsidiary company, ARIAD Gene Therapeutics). He began his career as a management consultant to healthcare and biotechnology companies at L.E.K. Consulting. David is a graduate of Wesleyan University, where he was named the Gilbert Clee Scholar, and Harvard Business School, where he received an MBA with Distinction.

 

Raj Pallapothu, mHealth Global Lead, Bayer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajpallapothu/

Joel Sangerman, Chief Commercial Officer, Click Therapeutics
Joel serves as Chief Commercial Officer for Click Therapeutics. Click develops software as prescription medical treatments to improve the lives of patients throughout the world. For over 25 years Joel has helped payers, employers, providers and suppliers achieve better patient outcomes at a lower cost of care using new health technology. Helping to lead the charge for healthcare innovation, Joel will share how employers, insurers, and other healthcare payers are adopting Click’s clinically-validated digital therapeutics as key components to population health strategies. While at Johnson & Johnson as Director of Payer Relations and with Walgreens as Vice President of Market Development Joel initiated pay for performance and shared savings models of value-based purchasing with payers and health systems. Joel also led commercial efforts with Sanofi Aventis to help providers contain the exploding costs associated with chronic conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Joel graduated from DePaul University in Chicago and later completed a Fellowship in healthcare leadership with the Washington DC based Advisory Board Company.

 

Nathan Treloar, President & Co-Founder, Orbita

Nathan Treloar is President and Co-founder of Orbita. He’s a respected expert and frequent speaker on consumer and business trends in voice and conversational user experiences in healthcare, as well as search, text and data mining, content management, and knowledge management, and has advised hundreds of the world’s largest companies and government agencies on their applications. Previously, Nathan held key executive positions at FAST Search, Microsoft, RAMP, and Ektron.

Joris Van Dam, PhD, Head, Digital Therapeutics, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

Joris van Dam is a Digital Health intrapreneur with 15 years’ experience in Pharmaceutical Research & Development, focusing on the innovative use of digital technologies to improve and transform therapeutic innovation, patient engagement, and clinical trial operations. Joris is currently leading the Digital Therapeutics initiative at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, including its collaboration with Pear Therapeutics on the development of novel digital therapies for the treatment of schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis.

 

Clinical Innovation for Combination Immunotherapy

Céline Adessi, PhD, Senior Group Director, Product Development, Safety Science Oncology, Licensing and Early Development, F. Hoffmann-La Roche

More than 20 years of experience in pharmaceutical companies, with strong research, pre-clinical and clinical safety expertise in different therapeutic areas. For 10 years, acted as project/team leader and laboratory head, leading various pre-clinical and clinical therapeutic programs. Currently, holds the position of Senior Group Director at Hofmann La Roche in the Product Development Safety Science organization, managing a team of safety science professionals working on early clinical development of oncology programs and in/out licensing opportunities. Core member of various committees within the organization, representing the Clinical Safety position

Roy Baynes, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President and Head, Global Clinical Development, CMO, Merck Research Laboratories

Roy Baynes is Senior Vice President and Head, Global Clinical Development and Chief Medical Officer at Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD). He was previously Senior Vice President of Oncology, Inflammation and Respiratory Therapeutics at Gilead Sciences and prior to that was Vice President Global Clinical Development and Therapeutic Area (TA) Head for Hematology / Oncology, at Amgen Inc. He graduated as a Medical Doctor and obtained a Master of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has had a long and distinguished career in the haematology-oncology-and stem cell transplantation fields, including drug development, basic research, clinical practice, clinical research, teaching and administration. He is a member of many international societies, including the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and has authored some 150 publications. He has been recurrently named among America’s top physicians. Before joining Amgen in 2002, he was the Charles Martin Professor of Cancer Research at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, an NCI designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA.

 

Jonathan Cheng, MD, Vice President & Oncology Therapeutic Area Head, Merck

Jon Cheng, MD, is a Vice President and Oncology Therapeutic Area Head at Merck Research Laboratories (MRL).  He leads the Late Stage Clinical Development at Merck Oncology, and in this role oversees the clinical development of all late stage clinical assets including pembrolizumab and its combinations in multiple solid organ tumors including lung, head/neck, gastrointestinal, breast, gyn, and hematologic malignancies. Dr. Cheng joined Merck in 2008 where he had previous responsibilities developing novel combinations within the Merck pipeline, incorporating biomarkers and companion diagnostic development into clinical trials, and directed a number of pembrolizumab registrational activities including supervising the approval of pembrolizumab in multiple tumor types

Raphael Clynes, MD, PhD, Vice President, Translational Biology, Xencor

https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphael-clynes-861b33a5/ 

Rakesh Dixit, PhD, DABT, President & CEO, Bionavigen

Dr. Dixit conducted extensive graduate and post-graduate training in Toxicology–Biochemistry with both Indian and US Institutions and is board certified in Toxicology from the American Board of Toxicology, Inc. since 1992. In December 1992, Rakesh joined the Department of Safety Assessment, Merck and Co., Inc, West Point, PA where he served in various management positions. During his about 14 years with Merck, Rakesh contributed to the successful filings of many blockbuster drugs. For about a year, Rakesh was associated with Johnson and Johnson PRD, La Jolla/Alza as Senior Director of Toxicology. In Aug 2006, Rakesh joined MedImmune, Inc. (an AstraZeneca Biologics company) to lead Global Biologics Safety Assessment, Experimental Pathology, and Laboratory Animal Medicine. In his current position, Rakesh is responsible for providing guidance on research and development of biological products; including nonclinical toxicology/safety support for all AstraZeneca-MedImmune biologics products, including monoclonal antibodies and vaccines. Rakesh has published more than 60 papers in renowned international journals and has given over 100 invited lectures/presentations/workshops in national and international meetings.

 

Andrew Ferguson, PhD, Director, Clinical Science, Gritstone Oncology, Inc.

Andrew Ferguson, PhD is a Director, Clinical Science at Gritstone Oncology responsible for the clinical development of Gritstone’s personalized tumor immunotherapies, including the GRANITE program focused on patient-specific neoantigen cancer vaccines and the SLATE program focused on an off-the-shelf shared neoantigen cancer vaccine. Dr. Ferguson studied tumor immunotherapy in the laboratory of Victor Engelhard with a focus on the impact of site-specific dendritic cell vaccination on T cell differentiation and migration into the tumor microenvironment. He has previously held positions in clinical development at Tesaro, Sanofi Oncology, and Genzyme in the fields of tumor immunotherapy, hematology, and solid organ transplantation. When not thinking about leukocytes, he is attempting to teach something to his three boys (or using a paddleboard or skis to escape them).

Lena Frank, Executive Director, Alliance & Program Management, Eisai

Lena Frank is the Executive Director of Alliance and Program Management in Eisai’s Oncology Business Group where she manages alliance management, program management, clinical outsourcing and business operations. Before joining Eisai in 2014, Lena held positions of increasing responsibility with Acorda Therapeutics, Alpharma and Rhone-Poulenc. Her past experience includes business development, project and portfolio management, marketing, product management, and sales. In addition to being a Certified Strategic Alliance Professional, Lena also holds Project Management Professional certification.

Thomas Goss, PharmD, Senior Vice President, Boston Healthcare Associates, Inc.

Thomas Goss has more than 20 years of experience managing and directing healthcare research, including examination of the impact of public and private Payor policy on patient access, assessment of health-related quality-of-life, patient preference, and patient satisfaction associated with healthcare interventions, and evaluation of health economic outcomes associated with healthcare innovations.

Xiaomo Jiang, PhD, Investigator, Immuno-Oncology, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

https://www.linkedin.com/in/xmjiang/

 

Jill Loftiss, Head, Clinical Operations & Oncology, MedImmune

Jill’s worked across multiple therapeutic areas, in both early and late development. As a department leader, Jill learned the value of balancing standardization while maintaining the ability to provide bespoke solutions. She most enjoys turning complex projects and issues into simple and intuitive answers. Jill believes we are at an exciting point in the clinical trial profession with a welcome emphasis on the patient and access to real time data.

Loui Madakamutil, PhD, Senior Vice President and Head of Preclinical Development, Nektar Therapeutics
Loui Madakamutil is currently SVP and Head of Preclinical development at Nektar Therapeutics and is responsible for the overall discovery strategy of Nektar to deliver novel immuno-modulatory medicines in several therapeutic areas including Cancer and Auto-inflammatory diseases. Previously Loui was a Senior Director and Lead for Rheumatology-DAS at Janssen Research Division for 2.5 years where Loui was responsible for the discovery strategy and delivering portfolio assets from early ideas to proof of concept in humans in Rheumatic diseases. Loui held appointment as the Site Head of Immunology at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, where over the 5-year period he has held positions of increasing responsibility in Drug Discovery and Early Development, and was responsible for driving Takeda’s Discovery strategy in Immunology with a focus on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and Cancer Immunology. Loui also spent five years in Immunology discovery at Celgene in the Experimental Therapeutics Team where he worked on Apremilast and Revlemid to understand immunological MOA for these compounds. He has taken several large and small molecule compounds into Phase 1a. Loui did his Post-Doctoral training at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology first with Eli Sercarz and then with Hilde Cheroutre. Loui has a PhD in applied immunology from University of Mumbai India and MS in Biochemistry 

Fahar Merchant, PhD, President & CEO, Medicenna Biopharma

Dr. Merchant is a 25-year biotech veteran, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Medicenna. Previously he was President and CEO of Protox Therapeutics (TSX.V and TSX; now Sophiris Bio, Nasdaq) where he established a late clinical stage urology company. At Protox he raised more than $70M through multiple PIPEs, including a $35M investment by Warburg Pincus. In 1992 he co-founded IntelliGene Expressions, Inc., a biologics CDMO, and built it into one of the fastest growing companies in Canada. In 2000, by strategic in-licensing, he co-founded Avicenna Medica, Inc., a clinical stage oncology company that was sold a year later to KS Biomedix (LSE) for $90M. Fahar was CTO and Director of KS Biomedix until its acquisition by Xenova (Nasdaq and LSE; now Celtic Pharma). Fahar has closed several transactions valued at more than $300M. He has a PhD in Biochemical Engineering from Western University.

Mark C. Poznansky, MD, PhD, Director, Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Steve and Deborah Gorlin MGH Research Scholar, Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Poznansky is an innovator whose work bridges academic discovery and clinical care. As a leader in the field of leukocyte migration and the modulation of leukocyte trafficking and function, he has linked discovery with the generation of new vaccine and immunotherapeutic approaches for cancer, infectious diseases and type 1 diabetes. Dr. Poznansky has gained recognition for establishing a new model for translational research that accelerates the process by which basic biological discoveries move towards products and technologies that improve patient care and treatment. Since 2008 he has served as the director of the translational Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center (VIC) at MGH, which is putting this model into practice. The goal of VIC is to enable efficient and rapid transition of promising technologies through preclinical development and into the clinical stage of development through technology spin outs, partnerships or out-licensing. He oversees the research work of a team of investigators, postdoctoral fellows and other trainees addressing key research questions regarding these new therapeutics and vaccines and leads an operational team that facilitates the execution of business, regulatory, manufacturing, and other developmental tasks associated with the preclinical translation of these candidates.  Relevant to this presentation, Dr. Poznansky, in concert with Drs. Patrick Reeves and Huabiao Chen are developing novel combination immunotherapies for ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. Dr. Poznansky obtained his B.Sc. and his MD at the University of Edinburgh and his PhD in Medical Sciences at Cambridge University. He also served as a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps (V) in the UK.  He completed his post-doctoral research training in retrovirology at Harvard Medical School and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and his infectious diseases clinical fellowship training at Imperial College and Harvard Medical School. He is the scientific founder of three biotech companies and serves as a member of the Commercialization Council at Partners Healthcare.

 

Emmett Schmidt, PhD, Distinguished Scientist & Executive Director, Merck Research Labs

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmett-schmidt-73945975/

 

Dimitris Skokos, PhD, Associate Director, Immune & Inflammatory Diseases, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

Dimitris Skokos was born and raised in Athens, Greece. He is an Associate Director in the Immune and inflammatory diseases department at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals as well as an adjunct faculty Professor at Rockefeller University. In 1998, he double majored receiving degrees in BioMedical Science and Biotechnology, from Ecole Superior in Paris and in Cellular Biology and Physiology from the University of Paris, with High Honors. After earning his Master’s and Ph.D. in Molecular Immunology from Pasteur Institute, he joined the laboratories of Ralph Steinman (Nobel laureate, 2011) and Michel Nussenzweig at Rockefeller University, studying the role of tolerance and immunity in inflammation. In 2008, he joined Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he and his team are leading Regeneron’s efforts in cancer immunotherapy. Dimitris holds more than 10 patents and 25 publications and was part of the team that developed the recently FDA approved treatment for metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, Libtayo. He has had the honor to work with esteem scientists, George D. Yancopoulos and Roy P. Vagelos.

 

Masataka Suzuki, PhD, Assistant Professor, Center for Cell & Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine

No bio available

 

Elizabeth Trehu, MD, CMO, Jounce Therapeutics

Elizabeth (Beth) G. Trehu, M.D, FACP, is Chief Medical Officer of Jounce Therapeutics, a clinical stage immuno-oncology company dedicated to transforming the treatment of cancer by matching the right immunotherapy to the right patient. Dr. Trehu designed and conducted her first cancer immunotherapy clinical trials in the early 1990s as an assistant professor and translational researcher at Tufts University School of Medicine, where her research focused on reducing the toxicity of high dose interleukin-2.  She has held oncology leadership positions in drug development from IND through post-marketing at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Genzyme Corporation, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, and Promedior, Inc. and joined Jounce in 2015 to build and lead the clinical organization. Dr. Trehu was recognized as a ‘2012 Woman to Watch’ by Mass High Tech. She holds an M.D. from New York University School of Medicine and an A.B. cum laude from Princeton University.

Apostolia M. Tsimberidou, MD, PhD, Professor, Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG) Programs, Investigational Cancer Therapeutics, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Dr. Tsimberidou has pioneered the personalized medicine program in the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics. In 2007 she designed and is the principal investigator of the IMPACT trial, an Initiative for Molecular Profiling and Advanced Cancer Therapy, and she established a tissue bank from patients with advanced cancer. Dr. Tsimberidou earned her MD from the Aristotelian University in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1991 and her PhD from the University of Athens, Greece in 2001. She joined the MD Anderson Cancer Center as a postdoctoral fellow in 1998 and she has rigorously pursued a leading role in cancer research.  She has diligently designed over 20 clinical trials, including a study of oxaliplatin, fludarabine, cytarabine, and rituximab, which changed the standard of care for patients with Richter’s syndrome. Dr. Tsimberidou has a multitude of first-authored publications in high-impact journals. She has published over 240 papers (over 130 as first or senior author), ten book chapters and educational modules and is the Editor of a major textbook entitled “Targeted Therapy in Cancer” (Wiley, Blackwell, 2015). Dr. Tsimberidou received awards from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), including a Career Development Award, the American Society of Hematology (ASH), and the European Society of Hematology (EHA). Because of her innovative work, she has been invited as a keynote speaker at ASCO, ASH, EHA, the International Lymphoma Conference and several international conferences. She completed the ASCO Leadership Development Program and she served on the ASCO’s Educational Committee and the prestigious Cancer Research Committee (CRC). She served as the Chair of the CRC in 2016-2017. Dr Tsimberidou is the Head of the Membership Committee of the Worldwide Innovative Network consortium in Precision Medicine (Paris, France). Based on her expertise in personalized medicine, she has become a nationally and internationally recognized authority in the field of personalized medicine, and cancer drug development. Dr. Tsimberidou’s work on personalized medicine demonstrated that identifying tumor specific molecular aberrations and choosing therapy based on these abnormalities is associated with higher rates of response, survival and time to treatment failure in patients with advanced cancer compared to the standard approach. She presented these results at the ASCO’s prestigious official Press Program in 2011 and 2018. Her work has garnered extensive media coverage, including articles in The Economist, the Wall Street Journal the Bloomberg report and the Boston Globe. An independent review in 2011 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology stated that her work is one of few projects with the greatest potential for favorably impacting patients’ lives. Dr. Tsimberidou developed the IMPACT2 trial, a randomized study in precision medicine comparing the use of genetically targeted therapy against tumor molecular aberrations with standard treatment not selected on the basis of genomic analysis in patients with metastatic cancer. She is the principal investigator of many clinical trials, including immuno-oncology trials and T-cell therapy programs for patients with solid tumors

Chris Twitty, PhD, CSO, OncoSec
Dr. Twitty brings over 20 years of experience in tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy, including the discovery and development of OncoSec’s leading clinical immune monitoring and biomarker program. Dr. Twitty earned his PhD from Oregon Health & Science University where his work was focused on novel tumor vaccine strategies and was awarded an American Cancer Society fellowship training grant for his post-doctoral studies in Dr. Bernard Fox’s Molecular Tumor Immunology Laboratory. After developing a pre-clinical and clinical immunological program focused on glioblastoma at Tocagen, Dr. Twitty joined Oncosec. Previously, Dr. Twitty held scientific positions of increasing responsibility at Bayer Pharmaceuticals and Cell Genesys, Inc.

Nikolas T. Weissmueller, PhD, Associate Director, Strategic Options & Assessment, Business Insights & Analytics, R&D, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Dr. Weissmueller is a clinical development strategy analyst at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). As Associate Director in BMS’s Business Insights and Analytics team, he evaluates and optimizes clinical development strategies for early and late stage medicines in the company’s Oncology and Immuno-Oncology (I-O) portfolio. Dr. Weissmueller works with BMS’s Empliciti®, Yervoy®, and Opdivo® development teams, and leads the I-O asset and portfolio strategy support for BMS's China R&D organizations. Prior to joining Bristol-Myers Squibb, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Princeton University, where he directed immunology and oncology focused industry collaborations. He earned a PhD in Medical Sciences and a MSc in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Oxford, UK, and holds an Engineering undergraduate degree from Harvard

Philip A. Witman, MPH, MPhil, Director, Global Product Development, Regulatory – Oncology, Pfizer Inc.

Philip Witman has more than 14 years of regulatory experience in oncology. As Director of Regulatory Affairs for Oncology at Pfizer, his current responsibilities include serving as the Global Regulatory Lead for several Phase III pivotal trials and mentoring regulatory colleagues with their initial marketing applications. Philip has experience defining and implementing strategies and leading teams for interactions and submissions with the FDA, EMA, Health Canada, and the PMDA. He has taken products from the pre-IND stage through NDA and BLA/sBLA approvals and post-marketing commitments. Approvals have included oral and intravenous products as small molecules, a monoclonal antibody, and a radiolabeled monoclonal antibody. Successes have spanned multiple regulatory pathways including accelerated approval, standard approval, post-marketing confirmatory trials, Priority Review, Breakthrough Therapy Designation, and orphan drug designations. He has considerable experience working with co-development partners and conducting regulatory due diligence assessments of potential in-licensing and product divestment opportunities. Prior to transitioning to regulatory affairs, Philip had 19 years of clinical experience in the development and execution of programs in hematology/oncology and additional therapeutic areas. Prior to Pfizer, he honed his career at both global pharmaceutical companies and small biotech firms that included GlaxoSmithKline, Protarga, US Bioscience, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Centocor, Biogen, and Ayerst Laboratories. He has served as a member of the PhRMA committee on Breakthrough Therapy Designations and as a reviewer for the journal Cancer Investigation. Philip has 11 publications in peer-reviewed journals as well as 35 abstracts and published letters. He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the Drug Information Association. In addition to doctoral work on the epidemiology of pediatric brain tumors, Philip received his MPhil in Chronic Disease Epidemiology, his MPH in Environmental Health, and his BA in Religious Studies all from Yale University.

Ying Zhang, Associate Director, Oncology, Center for Observational Research and Data Sciences (CORDS), Business Insights & Analytics (BI&A), Bristol-Myers Squibb

Graduated from University of Illinois at Chicago with Master’s degree of Science in Public Health, focusing on Biostatistics. Working in consulting firm for market research and real-world evidence studies for two years and then moved to BMS for real world research and doing analysis focus on oncology for the past nine years. Graduated from Capital Medical University in Beijing, China, finished residency and worked as a Pediatrician at Capital Institute of Pediatrics for two years in Beijing, China.

iPS Cells for Disease Modeling and Drug Discovery

Blake Anson, PhD, Director, Marketing, StemoniX

Dr. Anson has expertise in the applications of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSCs)-derived cells in drug discovery and disease modeling and has developed multiple physiologically relevant assays. At StemoniX, Blake steers the marketing and communication for their high throughput, physiologically relevant screening platforms involving hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes and neural cells.

Stefan Braam, CEO, Ncardia

Stefan Braam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ncardia. Stefan brings Ncardia over a decade of experience in stem cell technology, product development and general management. Earlier in his career, Stefan obtained a MSc and Ph.D. in stem cell biology and obtained international experience in labs in the UK and Australia

Arne Bruyneel, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Mark Mercola Lab, Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford University School of Medicine

Arne Bruyneel holds a Master’s in Bioscience Engineering from Ghent University (Belgium) and DPhil in cardiovascular physiology form the University of Oxford (UK). Currently, Arne Bruyneel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the lab of Mark Mercola at Stanford University. His research interests include high throughput phenotypic screening of cardiomyocytes and cardio-oncology

Paul W. Burridge, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Center for Pharmacogenomics, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

We use human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) to understand the role of the genome in influencing drug efficacy and side effects such as chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity. We are also interested in developing new modalities for prospectively testing drug efficacy and toxicity, discovering cardioprotectants, cardiac regenerative medicine, and hiPSC models of cancer. Along with the hiPSC model, we use a combination of whole genome sequencing, automation and robotics, high-throughput drug screening, high-content imaging, and electrophysiological testing 

Stephen A. Duncan, PhD, Smartstate Chair in Regenerative Medicine, Professor and Chairman, Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology, Medical University of South Carolina

Stephen Duncan was born in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and studied Molecular Biology at the University of Glasgow. He received his Ph.D./D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1992 for working on the mechanisms that controlled transmission of the poxvirus, vaccinia, with Dr Geoffrey Smith. He then moved to The Rockefeller University in New York City to undertake a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr James Darnell where he studied transcriptional regulation of liver development. He completed his fellowship in 1996 after which he became an Assistant Professor at the Rockefeller University. He transferred to the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 1997, where he moved through the ranks to become the Marcus Professor in Human and Molecular Genetics in the department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy. In 2007 he accepted a position as the founding Director of MCW’s Program in Regenerative Medicine. In 2015 Dr. Duncan relocated to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, where he is currently the Chair of the Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology. Research in the Duncan Lab focuses on the use of mice and stem cells to understand the contribution of transcription factors to embryonic development and function of the liver. His group has developed technologies to control the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells into hepatocytes.  Researchers in his laboratory have exploited this system to model rare diseases in hepatic metabolism and as a platform for drug discovery

Thomas Durcan, PhD, Assistant Professor, Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University

Thomas M. Durcan is an assistant professor in the department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University and is a member of the Centre for Neurodegenerative disease group at the MNI. Durcan received his Bachelor of Science from University College Dublin, Ireland, before moving to the USA where he obtained his PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Notre Dame in 2007. For his postdoctoral research, Durcan joined the Parkinson’s research group of Dr Edward Fon, were he focused on the function of deubiquitinating enzymes in Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. His current research program is focused on the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and mouse models to understand how specific pathways are affected in Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. In addition to his academic appointment, Durcan manages the new Brain Canada iPSC-CRISPR translational platform at the MNI, focused on providing iPSC-derived neurons for use in different academic and translational projects. During this time, he has published in many prestigious scientific journals including Journal of Cell Biology, EMBO Journal, and Human Molecular Genetics. He has previously received research support from the Parkinson’s Society of Canada, Parkinson’s Disease Foundation and National Ataxia Foundation. He is currently funded through a research grant from the Michael J Fox Foundation. 

Michael Dunn, PhD, Senior Staff Scientist, Cardiovascular Research, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

Bio coming soon..

Gary Gintant, PhD, Senior Research Fellow, AbbVie

Dr. Gary Gintant is Senior Research Fellow in the Dept. of Integrative Pharmacology, Integrated Science and Technology, at AbbVie. He is involved in multiple internal drug discovery and safety initiatives internally; external activities include various cardiac safety initiatives (such as ILSI/HESI Proarrhythmia Models Project, the Cardiac Safety Research Consortium, and the Comprehensive in Vitro Proarrhythmia Assay Initiative) while serving on various journal editorial boards, NIH study sections, and Safety Pharmacology Society committees. Research interests include cardiovascular pharmacology, cellular electrophysiology/ion channels, arrhythmias, application of stem-cell derived cells and tissues to drug discovery efforts, and translational medicine. He gained his MA, M.Phil. and PhD degrees from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

 

Sophie Lelievre, DVM, PhD, LLM, Professor, Cancer Pharmacology, Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Lelièvre is a native of France who obtained her undergraduate degree as engineer in Veterinary Sciences from the University of Louvain (Belgium) and her D.V.M. degree from the University of Liège (Belgium) in 1990. She worked as a veterinarian in the emergency room in Paris area (France) from 1990 to 1995, while pursuing M.S. and Ph.D. graduate studies in Cancer Pharmacology at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute and University of Paris VI (Pierre & Marie Curie). Dr. Lelièvre is the 1995 recipient of (i) the National Prize for Fundamental Cancer Research/young investigator from the French Society of Cancer and National Federation of Cancer Institutes and (ii) the National Alexandre Joel Prize for young investigator from the Association for Cancer Research. During her postdoctoral training in Mina Bissell’s laboratory at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA) from 1995 to 2000, she studied the role of the organization of the cell nucleus in normal and cancerous breast epithelial cell behaviors using three-dimensional models of cell culture that recapitulate tissue organization. Dr. Lelièvre joined the Department of Basic Medical Sciences at Purdue, as a faculty member and Walther Cancer Institute Scholar, in October 2000. Her research program has been externally funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of DefenseCongressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) among other agencies. It focuses on the role of the organization of the cell nucleus in gene expression and genome stability and the relationship between tissue polarity and nuclear functions, notably epigenetics. Translational projects are targeted towards early detection and prevention of breast cancer. She was one of the three featured breast cancer researchers of the CDMRP in 2008 in recognition for her contributions to breast cancer research since her early career development funding by CDMRP in 1997. Her research accomplishments include notably, (i) the development of methods to analyze and detect phenotypes based on cell nucleus organization at the single cell level, (ii) the design of preclinical three-dimensional (3D) cell culture models including organson-a-chip to be used for screening protective agents against breast cancer development and for the design of nanomedical tools for therapies, and (iii) the identification of early breast tissue alterations necessary for cancer development and related new potential targets for breast cancer prevention and treatment. In 2015, she created the 3D Cell Culture Core (3D3C) Facility at Purdue University with the aim of bringing engineers and biologists together to design better models for research on chronic diseases. To better integrate public health related disciplines to her research projects, Dr. Lelièvre completed a Master’s degree in Law, Health and Ethics from a EuroPubhealth and Erasmus Mundus international program in 2008 at the University of Rennes (France). She initiated an international and multidisciplinary program on primary prevention of breast cancer ( www.purdue.edu/IBCN) in 2009 that has received logistic support from the World Health Organization and includes 12 partner countries and yearly symposia (www.purdue.edu/breastcancer). Dr. Lelièvre was selected as a Purdue Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy Fellow in 2009 and Scholar in 2010 and as the 2012 Discovery Learning Research Center Faculty Research Fellow to pursue aspects of this international program. For her work on cancer prevention, she was selected for an Indiana Women of Achievement Award in 2015. She is also a Purdue University Faculty Scholar and an appointed member of the NIH, NCI-I study section for K awards supporting the training of scientists toward independence in research. Dr. Lelièvre teaches Applied Pharmacology in the Purdue DVM and IU Lafayette Medical School programs. She is developing a course on International Primary Prevention Research for chronic disease at Purdue University and has been a recurring invited lecturer on cancer prevention in the international Master of Public Health of the School of Public Health in France

Christoph Patsch, PhD, Team Lead Stem Cell Assays, Disease Relevant Cell Models and Assays, Chemical Biology, Therapeutic Modalities, Roche Pharma Research and Early Development

Christoph Patsch heads a research lab within the Stem Cell Platform at Roche Innovation Center Basel. His group is engaged in internal drug discovery projects as well as external research collaborations leveraging iPS cell technology for translational in vitro models. His lab is actively involved in two European consortia – Innovative Medicines Initiative StemBANCC and – Horizon 2020 COSYN. Current main research activities are: I) Modelling Alzheimer’s disease in patient iPS cell-derived 2D and 3D neuronal cultures to study the underlying pathological mechanisms. II)                Applying novel differentiation methods to generate vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cells to develop a model for endothelial dysfunction. III)    Assessing iPS cell-based in vitro models to bridge the gap between animal models and clinical trials

Nutan Prasain, PhD, Associate Director, Cardiovascular Programs, Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine (AIRM)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nutan-prasain-b1479a85/

Gabriele Proetzel, PhD, Director, Regenerative Medicine, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Gabriele joined Takeda Pharmaceuticals in 2013. She is focusing on cell and gene therapy approaches. Gabriele Proetzel has earned a Master in Life Sciences from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Würzburg, Germany, with the Master thesis prepared at the Max Planck Institute of Immunology, Freiburg, Germany. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA with her thesis work focusing on developing knockout mouse models via targeted mutagenesis in ES cells in the laboratory of Prof. Thomas Doetschman. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Peter Gruss in Göttingen, Germany. Following her postdoctoral training, Gabriele became a group leader in the cell biology and musculoskeletal group at Boehringer Mannheim/Roche Penzberg, Germany. Then she joined the startup Deltagen Inc., San Carlos, CA, where she was critical for building the mouse knockout pipeline. In 2001, Gabriele accepted the position as Chief Scientific Officer at the biotech startup Scil Proteins, Halle Germany, and was responsible for R&D in protein therapeutics including alternative scaffold proteins, as well as intellectual property and licensing activities. Before joining Takeda, Gabriele held the position of Associate Director of Technology Transfer at the non-profit research institution The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) in Bar Harbor, Maine, US

Liz Quinn, PhD, Associate Director, Stem Cell Marketing, Marketing, Takara Bio USA

Dr. Liz Quinn is Associate Director for Stem Cell Marketing at Takara Bio USA and has a long history developing novel technology platforms that support drug discovery. In her current role, she responsible for commercialization of the stem cell portfolio, including human iPS/ES donor lines, culture systems and hES cell line derivation services.

Lorenz Studer, MD, Director, Center for Stem Cell Biology, Member, Developmental Biology Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Lorenz P. Studer, MD is the Director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology and a Member of the Developmental Biology Program at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His lab has established many of the currently available techniques for turning pluripotent stem cells into the diverse cell types of the nervous system. He has also been among the first to realize the potential of patient-specific stem cell in modeling human disease and drug discovery. Finally, he has a major interest in regenerative medicine and leads a multidisciplinary consortium to pursue the clinical application of human stem cell-derived dopamine neurons for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. Recent awards include a Macarthur Fellowship, the Ogawa-Yamanaka Prize and the Jacob Heskel Gabbay award in Biotechnology and Medicine

Yishan Sun, PhD, Investigator III, Neuroscience, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research

Yishan Sun is currently a research investigator and lab head at Novartis, focusing on drug discovery for pediatric epilepsies and neurodevelopmental disorders. His scientific specialties include molecular genetics in model organisms, disease modeling using human ES/iPS cells, and electrophysiological methods in conventional and automated systems.  He obtained an undergraduate degree in biotechnology from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. He completed his PhD research in neuroscience at the University of Iowa, where he studied the role of several TRP and DEG/ENaC ion channels in mechanosensory neurons and chemosensory neurons of fruit flies. He then pursued postdoctoral training at Stanford University, where he established a human cellular model of Dravet Syndrome using patient-derived iPS cells

Qin Wang, PhD, Scientist, Drug Safety Research and Evaluation, Takeda
https://www.linkedin.com/in/qin-wang-7802807a/

Jeff Willy, PhD, Research Fellow, Discovery and Investigative Toxicology, Vertex

Jeffrey A. Willy, Ph.D., is currently a Research Fellow in Discovery and Investigative Toxicology at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, CA.  Dr. Willy received his doctoral degree from the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) where he studied the role of the unfolded protein response during the pathogenesis of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.  Dr. Willy also holds an adjunct faculty position at IUSM where he is a graduate student advisor.  Dr. Willy began his career at Eli Lilly & Co. and worked there for over a decade.  While at Lilly, Dr. Willy ran a lab focused on mechanistic and systems toxicology that incorporated novel applications of CRISPR/Cas9 and was an active member of the Innovative Medicines Initiative.  Dr. Willy has numerous publications and presentations focusing on novel genomic methods to study liver injury and model adaptive and progressive pathologies.  Over his career, Dr. Willy has received multiple awards, including the 2016 Midwest Chapter of SOT Young Investigator Award, a 2016 MBSS SOT Research Award, 2015 Eli Lilly Innovator Award,  2015 AASLD Basic Science Young Investigator Award,  and 2009 John L. Emmerson Award for Scientific Excellence at Eli Lilly, to name a few.  Dr. Willy also holds a music degree in percussion from the Eastman School of Music and teaches high school students in his free time.

Fabian Zanella, PhD, Director, Research and Development, StemoniX

Dr. Zanella has expertise in the applications of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSCs)-derived cells in drug discovery and disease modeling and has developed multiple physiologically relevant assays. At StemoniX, Fabian steers the design, validation, and implementation of high throughput, physiologically relevant screening platforms involving hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes and neural cells.

Patient-Derived Tumor Organoids

Alejandro Amador, PhD, GSK, Scientific Leader, Platform Biology Automation, GSK

Alejandro Amador studied biology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain). He obtained his PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Mara Dierssen at the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG, Barcelona, Spain), where he worked with mouse models of Panic disorder and Alzheimer’s disease. He subsequently joined the laboratory of Dr. Alexey Terskikh at Sanford Burnham Prebys Institute (San Diego, California) to examine the epigenetic changes in neural stem cells required for adult neurogenesis. He then joined Takeda Pharmaceuticals (San Diego, California) to lead CNS programs in early discovery and generate cell-based assays to screen for potential small molecule drug candidates. Recently, he joined GSK (Collegeville, Pennsylvania) as a Scientific leader for the Platform Biology Automation group. He is responsible for identifying, designing and developing human-relevant assays across PK, safety and biology/efficacy to enable intelligent and automated drug discovery platforms for GSK

Jason Ekert, PhD, MBA, Head, Complex In Vitro Models, GlaxoSmithKline

I head the Complex In Vitro Models group in the R&D Platform Technology & Sciences organization at GlaxoSmithKline. I lead an integrated enterprise strategy for sustained, portfolio driven growth in R&D applications of human-relevant and translatable complex in vitro models (eg Spheroids, Organoids, MPS and bioprinting). Before coming to GSK I spent 11 years at Janssen BioTherapeutics in early biotherapeutic drug discovery in target discovery, drug validation and MOA studies applying complex cell-based assays across multiple therapeutic areas. My current focus at GSK is to improve predictive validity of early preclinical models leading to better characterized molecules, decreased R&D cycle time and a reduction in attrition

Aaron Goldman, PhD , Director, Drug Resistance Group, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Faculty and Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Breast Cancer Alliance Early Career Investigator, Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology

Our research at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School is focused on developing an understanding of how cancer cells respond and resist cancer chemo and immunotherapies. We seek to fully interrogate the entire tumor ecosystem, which encompasses tumor cells, the microenvironment around it, and even the role that normal cells contribute to the progression of cancer under drug pressure. To do this, we engage a unique interdisciplinary team of scientists to provide a complete picture of drug response and resistance in a patient's tumor.

Elena Ivanova, PhD, Senior Scientist, Medical Oncology, Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Elena Ivanova is a Senior Scientist at the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She received her PhD from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, and did postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Ivanova is greatly interested in the imaging and microscopy. Through her carrier she used different imaging applications from studying mechanisms of chromosomal instability and tumorigenesis by Spectral Karyotyping to evaluating immune- and targeted therapy by imaging in 3D culture systems

Russell W. Jenkins, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts General Hospital

No bio available

Roger D Kamm, PhD, Green Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Biological Engineering, Depts. of Mechanical Engineering and Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kamm’s interests lie at the interface of biology and mechanics, formerly in cell and molecular mechanics, and now in micro-physiological systems to model cancer and neurodegenerative disease.  Kamm has fostered biomechanics as Chair of the US National Committee on Biomechanics and of the World Council on Biomechanics and currently directs the NSF Center on Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems. He is a recipient of the Lissner Medal and the the Huiskes Medal, both for lifetime achievements, and is the inaugural recipient of the Nerem Medal for mentoring and education. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2010. Kamm is founder of AIM Biotech, a company that markets microfluidics for 3D cell culture systems

Kathleen Kelly, PhD, Lab Chief, Laboratory of Genitourinary Cancer Pathogenesis, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute

Dr. Kelly received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. She completed her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Philip Leder, Harvard Medical School, and she has maintained an independent research program at the NCI since 1984. Dr. Kelly's interests have focused on the genetic regulation of cell growth, cancer progression and metastasis

Tania (Tali) Konry, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Northeastern University

Dr. Konry’s laboratory at Northeastern University is focused on developing novel Bio-MEMS approaches to advance point of care diagnostics, cell culture and drug screening and delivery methods. She has developed Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) devices that integrate several laboratory functions such as real time monitoring of target clinically relevant analyte, proteomics, genomics, cell-cell interactions as well as cell secretion and surface monitoring of single cells on a micro-chip. Her single cell project was awarded with R21/NIH/NCI and R33/NIH/IMAT/NCI. Dr.Konry was nominated as Phase 1 Finalist of Follow That Cell Challenge/NIH and spotlighted in GEN magazine on her work in single-cell work. She also was recognized with Schumacher Faculty Award, presented to one faculty member early in their Northeastern career for significant academic achievement at Northeastern University and received a competitive BD Biosciences immunology research award for analyzing immune-tumor cell interactions in dynamics with single cell resolution

Raymond R Mattingly, PhD, Professor and Chair of Pharmacology, Wayne State University School of Medicine

Dr. Ray Mattingly is Professor of Pharmacology and Oncology and Chair of the Pharmacology Department at Wayne State University.  His research is centered on the identification of effective, new therapeutic approaches to cancers that are driven through activation of Ras signal transduction pathways in the absence of direct oncogenic mutation of Ras.  This mechanistic strand underlies both type 1 neurofibromatosis (NF1) and many cases of breast cancer.  With the support of a Komen for the Cure award, he established three-dimensional (3D) cell culture models of multiple sub-types of human breast cancer in order to provide tractable and relevant systems in which to identify targeted therapeutics.  In subsequent NCI-funded work, he has optimized and validated findings in animal models and patient samples with the goal of translating the work into the clinic.  In the context of NF1, he has developed co-culture 3D models of plexiform neurofibromas through the Neurofibromatosis Therapeutic Acceleration Program (NTAP), which includes collaboration with National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) for screening of compound libraries

Louis Scampavia, PhD, Senior Scientific Director of HTS Chemistry and Technologies, Scripps Research

Dr. Louis Scampavia is a faculty member at Scripps Research within the Department of Molecular Medicine; leveraging nearly four decades of research experience.  Having been at the Scripps Florida at its very inception, he currently serves as the Senior Scientific Director of HTS Chemistry and Technologies. The Scripps Molecular Screening HTS Center is focused on drug discovery to support academic investigators and industrial partners. Duties include establishing collaborations with other biomedical researchers to facilitate the development of screening assays for HTS compatibility; having the ultimate goal of discovering novel therapeutics or repurposing current ones. Dr. Scampavia currently serves as an investigator on a number of NIH grants and has also often served as a NIH/NCI peer grant reviewer

Christian Schmees, PhD, Head of Tumor Biology, Molecular Biology Department, NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Tübingen

Christian Schmees, Ph.D., is heading the Tumor Biology group at NMI. His responsibilities encompass technology development, management of ongoing projects, strategic planning and budgeting. Current projects in his group focus on the generation of cellular model systems of different types of cancer and their combination with RNAi and gene editing approaches for phenotypic analyses, compound testing and expression profiling. Dr. Schmees received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Tuebingen University. He holds a PhD in cancer immunology from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. His thesis resulted in the identification of gamma-glutamyl-transpeptidase as the major factor for T cell specific immune evasion of the tumorigenic bacterium Helicobacter pylori. As a postdoctoral fellow he joined the laboratories of Dr. Carl-Henrik Heldin at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) in Uppsala, Sweden and Dr. Philippe Bastiaens at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany. He received fellowships from the German Research Foundation and the LICR to support his research on differential regulation of intracellular PDGF α- and β-receptor trafficking. His work showed for the first time that transformation by oncogenic Ras induces the internalization of the PDGF β-receptor by macropinocytosis, enhancing its signaling activity and increasing anchorage-independent proliferation 

Hervé Tiriac, PhD, Associate Project Scientist, Department of Surgery, UC San Diego

My research interests include developing systems and platforms for precision medicine that may be utilized in the fight against pancreatic cancer. As a translational scientist I focused my efforts on human-derived organoids and optimized therapeutic and diagnostic platforms amenable to this ex-vivo culture system. I first helped develop the conditions to establish viable organoids derived from surgical samples, and later I optimized this method to establish organoids from fine needle aspirates and core biopsies. This enabled study of the full spectrum of pancreatic cancer patients as the majority of patients are diagnosed with metastatic disease and are therefore ineligible for surgery. Now I am developing organoid-based assays to identify effective treatments for individual patients and uncover mechanisms of drug-sensitivity and resistance. 

 

Yuan Zhang, PhD, Vice President, Pharmalegacy
Dr. Zhang had more than 20 years’ translational research experience both in academic and industrial in the areas of cancer, immunity and inflammation diseases in Australia. After his returning to China, Dr. Zhang is currently a VP of Pharmalegacy, a Shanghai China based CRO. Pharmalegacy is a premier in vivo pharmacology and equipped to obtain higher-quality pharmacological data across a greater number of diseases than any other CRO. Dr. Zhang has helped hundreds of clients with IND filings to both FDA and CFDA (China) for their therapeutic biologics candidates in a variety of immune disease and oncology.

Target Identification & Phenotypic Screening

Gabriel Baverel, DVM, PhD, President, Founder and CSO, Metabolys, Inc.

Gabriel Baverel, DVM & PhD, is a former Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Head of an INSERM research unit (Metabolomics and Metabolic Diseases) in Lyon. He is the founder, President and CSO of Metabolys, an emerging clinical development company seeking treatments for NASH and Fibrosis

John Doench, PhD, Associate Director, Genetic Perturbation Platform, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

Since joining the Broad Institute in 2009, I have engaged in dozens of collaborations centered on functional genomics. As Associate Director of the Genetic Perturbation Platform, my role is to provide expert guidance on the design, execution, and analysis of genetic screens, and have done so with a wide variety of research groups across many areas of biology. Additionally, I have many years of experience in the development and use of functional genomic techniques, first with RNAi and more recently with CRISPR technology for genome-wide loss-of-function screening. As leader of research and development in the Platform, I have stayed on the cutting-edge of newest techniques while also focusing on the reduction-to-practice that is critical for enabling collaboration with a broader community of researchers. Prior to joining the Broad, I received my Ph.D. in biology, training with Phil Sharp, and performed postdoctoral work with Ed Harlow at Harvard Medical School

Davide Gianni, PhD, Team Leader, Discovery Sciences, AstraZeneca

Davide Gianni currently leads the Cellular Assay Development team in Discovery Sciences (AZ) in Cambridge UK. The main focus of the team is to deliver the cellular assay portfolio for key therapeutic areas for AZ. He joined AZ in August 2015 from Boehringer-Ingelheim (Vienna) where he was in charge of leading a team of scientists to identify and validate drug target for oncology drug discovery. Davide got his PhD from University of Naples (Italy) and completed his postdoctoral studies at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla before relocating to Europe. He has authored >20 peer-reviewed publications and review articles in high impact journals covering several scientific areas including cancer and molecular biology, neurodegeneration and drug discovery

Taleen Hanania, PhD, Senior Vice President, Behavioral Pharmacology, PsychoGenics Inc.

Dr. Taleen Hanania is the Sr. V.P., of Behavioral Pharmacology at PsychoGenics Inc., a preclinical CRO and drug discovery company with several partnered clinical programs.  Dr. Hanania received her Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston and completed her post-doctoral training and was a faculty member of Department of Pharmacology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.  Dr Hanania has extensive pharmacology and behavior experience in all neuropsychiatric areas.

Christian Klose, PhD, Head of Research and Development, Lipotype GmbH

After receiving his PhD on membrane biology and biophysics, he did a post-doc on mass spectrometry-based lipidomics with Andrej Shevchenko. He was involved in the buildup of Lipotype from the start and published numerous papers in the field of membrane biology and lipidomics. In his role as Head of R&D Christian enjoys developing novel technology and putting it into action for routine use

 

Sophie Lelievre, DVM, PhD, LLM, Professor, Cancer Pharmacology, Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Lelièvre is a native of France who obtained her undergraduate degree as engineer in Veterinary Sciences from the University of Louvain (Belgium) and her D.V.M. degree from the University of Liège (Belgium) in 1990. She worked as a veterinarian in the emergency room in Paris area (France) from 1990 to 1995, while pursuing M.S. and Ph.D. graduate studies in Cancer Pharmacology at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute and University of Paris VI (Pierre & Marie Curie). Dr. Lelièvre is the 1995 recipient of (i) the National Prize for Fundamental Cancer Research/young investigator from the French Society of Cancer and National Federation of Cancer Institutes and (ii) the National Alexandre Joel Prize for young investigator from the Association for Cancer Research. During her postdoctoral training in Mina Bissell’s laboratory at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA) from 1995 to 2000, she studied the role of the organization of the cell nucleus in normal and cancerous breast epithelial cell behaviors using three-dimensional models of cell culture that recapitulate tissue organization. Dr. Lelièvre joined the Department of Basic Medical Sciences at Purdue, as a faculty member and Walther Cancer Institute Scholar, in October 2000. Her research program has been externally funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of DefenseCongressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) among other agencies. It focuses on the role of the organization of the cell nucleus in gene expression and genome stability and the relationship between tissue polarity and nuclear functions, notably epigenetics. Translational projects are targeted towards early detection and prevention of breast cancer. She was one of the three featured breast cancer researchers of the CDMRP in 2008 in recognition for her contributions to breast cancer research since her early career development funding by CDMRP in 1997. Her research accomplishments include notably, (i) the development of methods to analyze and detect phenotypes based on cell nucleus organization at the single cell level, (ii) the design of preclinical three-dimensional (3D) cell culture models including organson-a-chip to be used for screening protective agents against breast cancer development and for the design of nanomedical tools for therapies, and (iii) the identification of early breast tissue alterations necessary for cancer development and related new potential targets for breast cancer prevention and treatment. In 2015, she created the 3D Cell Culture Core (3D3C) Facility at Purdue University with the aim of bringing engineers and biologists together to design better models for research on chronic diseases. To better integrate public health related disciplines to her research projects, Dr. Lelièvre completed a Master’s degree in Law, Health and Ethics from a EuroPubhealth and Erasmus Mundus international program in 2008 at the University of Rennes (France). She initiated an international and multidisciplinary program on primary prevention of breast cancer (www.purdue.edu/IBCN) in 2009 that has received logistic support from the World Health Organization and includes 12 partner countries and yearly symposia (www.purdue.edu/breastcancer). Dr. Lelièvre was selected as a Purdue Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy Fellow in 2009 and Scholar in 2010 and as the 2012 Discovery Learning Research Center Faculty Research Fellow to pursue aspects of this international program. For her work on cancer prevention, she was selected for an Indiana Women of Achievement Award in 2015. She is also a Purdue University Faculty Scholar and an appointed member of the NIH, NCI-I study section for K awards supporting the training of scientists toward independence in research. Dr. Lelièvre teaches Applied Pharmacology in the Purdue DVM and IU Lafayette Medical School programs. She is developing a course on International Primary Prevention Research for chronic disease at Purdue University and has been a recurring invited lecturer on cancer prevention in the international Master of Public Health of the School of Public Health in France

Danilo Maddalo, PhD, Lab Head, ONC Pharmacology, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Novartis Pharma AG

Danilo Maddalo obtained his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Karlsruhe (Germany). He thereafter joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, USA) as research fellow where he generated a CRISPR-induced mouse model of oncogenic chromosomal rearrangements. He finally moved to Novartis (Basel, Switzerland) where he currently leads a laboratory focusing on pharmacology and generation of preclinical models.

Jeffrey Moffitt, PhD, Assistant Professor, Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital and Department of Microbiology, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Jeffrey Moffitt received his PhD in Physics from the University of California Berkeley under the direction of Dr. Carlos Bustamante, where he developed novel optical manipulation methods to study molecular motors. He received postdoctoral training from Dr. Xiaowei Zhuang at Harvard University, where he developed methods for transcriptome-scale imaging in single cells. He is an Assistant Professor in the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Department of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School

Arvind Rao, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Arvind Rao was until recently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center since 2011. Prior to joining MD Anderson, he was a Lane Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in bioimage informatics. Arvind received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Bioinformatics from the University of Michigan, specializing in transcriptional genomics. At MD Anderson, Arvind is working on using image analysis and machine learning methods to link image-derived phenotypes with genetic data, across biological scale (i.e. single cell, tissue and radiology data).

Filip Roudnicky, PhD, Senior Scientist, pRED, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd.

Filip Roudnicky is a senior scientist in the disease relevant cellular assay team in Roche. His is responsible for genome editing for disease modeling and for CRISPR/Cas9 genetic screens. He is also expert on disease relevant cellular assays involving endothelial cells. Filip started his career with a PhD in a lab of Prof. M. Detmar at ETH Zurich. He studied tumor angiogenesis of invasive bladder carcinoma. As a guest research scientist he has worked, in RIKEN Yokohama, Japan, under Dr. Jay W. Shin, on induced-neuronal stem cells and RNA-sequencing analysis. He has been a postdoctoral fellow in Roche and Harvard with the lab of Prof. C. Cowan developing an in vitro model of retinal endothelial cells

Fabien Vincent, PhD, Associate Research Fellow, Hit Discovery and Lead Profiling Group, Pfizer

Fabien Vincent, Ph.D., is an Associate Research Fellow in the Hit Discovery and Lead Profiling Group at Pfizer.  His laboratory provides molecular pharmacology support for the small molecule project portfolios of the Immunology & Inflammation research unit and the Centers for Therapeutic Innovation. This work includes designing hit identification strategies and screening funnels, developing assays for high throughput screening as well as additional assays to elucidate the structure activity relationship of active compounds, understand their mechanism of action and facilitate translation to pre-clinical models. His main research interests are centered on improving the translation of discovery research to patients and specifically include phenotypic screening and atypical molecular mechanisms of action. Fabien Vincent led a team of Pfizer scientists in an analysis of how best to approach phenotypic screening, and specifically how to design the optimal phenotypic assays, those which can best predict compounds and mechanisms that will be effective in patients. Fabien Vincent received a Diplôme d’Ingénieur in organic chemistry from CPE Lyon (France) before conducting graduate research in the fields of chemical biology and enzymology in the laboratory of Pr. Harold Kohn at the University of Houston. He later became a post-doctoral fellow in chemical biology at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego.

Blood-Brain Barrier

Nathalie Y.R. Agar, PhD, Associate Professor, Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Nathalie Y.R. Agar, Ph.D. is the founding Director of the Surgical Molecular Imaging Laboratory (SMIL) in the Department of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Agar’s multidisciplinary training includes a B.Sc. in Biochemistry, Ph.D. in Chemistry, a postdoctoral fellowship in Neurology and Neurosurgery from McGill University, and further postdoctoral training in Neurosurgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. From this unique background, she has developed distinct skills to better understand the requirements and limitations regarding the implementation of novel instrumentation, sample and data analysis, and cancer and surgical needs in the medical environment. She has also developed a network of specialists to satisfy the many different aspects of translational research activities. Her research aims to develop and implement comprehensive molecular diagnoses through improved biochemical classifications.  This will enable surgeons and oncologists to tailor treatment from the time of surgery and allow personalized cancer care using molecular imaging with mass spectrometry approaches. She is also developing and validating a direct in vivo mass spectrometry analysis of surgical tissue to assist in the evaluation of tumor margins. Her laboratory also focuses on the mass spectrometry imaging of drugs and metabolites from pre-clinical animal models to clinical trials’ samples to study and screen for targeted therapeutics for brain cancers considering their ability to access the central nervous system. Nathalie has been an active volunteer with the Brain Science Foundation for years, including serving as Program Advisor for patient programs, and as a member of the Advisory Board

Samira M. Azarin, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota

Samira M. Azarin, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the Univ. of Minnesota. Her research focuses on engineering the cell microenvironment for applications in regenerative medicine and cancer therapeutics. She has a BS in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in chemical engineering from the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison

Ruben Boado, PhD, Vice President, Research & Development/Co-Founder, ArmaGen, Inc.

Dr. Boado co-founded ArmaGen in 2004, following more than 25 years of academic experience in fields of molecular and cell biology of the BBB, and drug delivery to the brain. His leadership and expertise have been instrumental in the development of ArmaGen’s extensive product pipeline, including potential biotherapeutic treatments for mucopolysaccharidosis, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Boado was the principal investigator in a number of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs granted by the National Institutes of Health to ArmaGen. Dr. Boado is also a co-inventor of the intellectual property that supports ArmaGen’s pipeline. He Professor Emeritus of Medicine at UCLA and has published over 200 scientific peer-reviewed publications and book chapters related to his field

 

Chenghua Gu, DVM & PhD, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School

No bio available

Leonard Khiroug, PhD, CSO, Neurotar Ltd

Leonard Khiroug is co-founder and CSO of Neurotar and Adj. Prof. at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Studies synaptic pathophysiology using in vivo microscopy. PhD from SISSA in Italy and postdoc training at Duke University and NIH in the USA. Co-author of 60+ peer-reviewed articles and inventor on several patent

Sophie Lelievre, DVM, PhD, LLM, Professor, Cancer Pharmacology, Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Sophie Lelièvre is a native of France who obtained her undergraduate degree as engineer in Veterinary Sciences from the University of Louvain (Belgium) and her D.V.M. degree from the University of Liège (Belgium) in 1990. She worked as a veterinarian in the emergency room in Paris area (France) from 1990 to 1995, while pursuing M.S. and Ph.D. graduate studies in Cancer Pharmacology (organization of the cell nucleus in chemoresistance and cancer cell behavior) at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute and University of Paris VI (Pierre & Marie Curie). Dr. Lelièvre joined the Department of Basic Medical Sciences at Purdue, as a faculty member and Walther Cancer Institute Scholar, in October 2000. Her research focuses on the role of the organization of the cell nucleus in gene expression and genome stability and the relationship between tissue polarity and nuclear functions, notably epigenetics. Translational projects are targeted towards early detection and prevention of breast cancer. Her research accomplishments include notably, the development of methods to analyze and detect phenotypes based on cell nucleus organization at the single cell level, the design of preclinical three-dimensional cell culture models of breast cancer risk and for screening protective agents against breast cancer development as well as for the development of nanomedicine, and the identification of early breast tissue alterations necessary for cancer development and related new potential targets for breast cancer prevention and treatment

Irena Loryan, PhD, Researcher, Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Translational PKPD, Uppsala University

Irena Loryan, M.D., Ph.D. is a researcher in the Translational Pharmacokinetics-Pharmacodynamics, tPKPD Group at the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Uppsala University, Sweden. She has more than 15 years of experience in the field of pharmacokinetics. Her current research interest focuses on mechanistic understanding of CNS drug disposition in health and disease with specific focus on discrete brain regions, aiming to advance pharmacotherapy and to support CNS drug development. She received her M.D. from Yerevan State Medical University in 2001 and earned Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Biochemistry in 2007. In the period from 2008 to 2010, she worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the Division of Pharmacogenetics in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, Karolinska Institutet (Prof. Magnus Ingelman-Sundberg Lab). From 2010 to 2013, she worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the tPKPD Group (Prof. Margareta Hammarlund-Udenaes Lab) in collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceutical

Filip Roudnicky, PhD, Senior Scientist, Disease Relevant Cellular Assays, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.

Filip Roudnicky is a senior scientist in the disease relevant cellular assay team in Roche. His is responsible for genome editing for disease modeling and for CRISPR/Cas9 genetic screens. He is also expert on disease relevant cellular assays involving endothelial cells. Filip started his career with a PhD in a lab of Prof. M. Detmar at ETH Zurich. He studied tumor angiogenesis of invasive bladder carcinoma. As a guest research scientist, he has worked, in RIKEN Yokohama, Japan, under Dr. Jay W. Shin, on induced-neuronal stem cells and RNA-sequencing analysis. He has been a postdoctoral fellow in Roche and Harvard with the lab of Prof. C. Cowan developing an in vitro model of retinal endothelial cells

Benjamin Smith, PhD, Scientist, Biologics Drug Discovery, Biogen

I am a scientist at Biogen in Biologics Drug Discovery, CNS Delivery, where our focus is to develop innovative biotherapeutic technologies to meet unmet need for patients with neurodegenerative disorders. Trained as a biophysicist and biochemist, I am active in the field of blood-brain barrier research with focus on discovery and engineering of antibodies that transport across the BBB.

I received my PhD in physics from McGill University, with specialization in cellular mechanics. As a postdoctoral scientist, I trained in membrane biophysics at the University of British Columbia and in single-molecule biochemistry at Brandeis University.

Danica Stanimirovic, MD, PhD, Director, Translational Bioscience Department, Human Health Therapeutics Portfolio, National Research Council of Canada

Dr. Danica Stanimirovic manages a portfolio of R&D projects in partnership with Canadian and international biopharma companies and academia aimed at de-risking and advancing biologics CNS pipeline in preclinical development.  She leads NRC’s strategic Program, Therapeutics beyond Brain Barriers, focused on developing new delivery strategies for CNS therapeutics.  She is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of Ottawa and founding member of the International Brain Barriers Society. Dr. Stanimirovic is recipient of funding from various consortia, including private-public ‘Focus on Brain’ initiative by Brain Canada.  She serves on Advisory Board of biotechnology companies and is recipient of several Canadian and international awards. She has authored over 150 manuscripts and 20 patents in the field of brain vascular physiology and drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier. 

Piotr Walczak, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Radiology, Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Piotr Walczak is an Assistant Professor in the Johns Hopkins Medicine Department of Radiology and Radiological Science. He specializes in magnetic resonance research and neuroradiology, with an emphasis on stem and progenitor cell transplantation. Dr. Walczak received his M.D. in 2002 from the Medical University of Warsaw in Poland. He then completed a research fellowship in cell-based therapy for neurodegenerative disorders at the University of South Florida. After a fellowship in cellular imaging at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Walczak joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins in 2008. He is an affiliated faculty member at the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s F.M. Kirby Research Center

Qin Wang, PhD, Scientist, Drug Safety Research and Evaluation, Takeda
https://www.linkedin.com/in/qin-wang-7802807a/

Nienke R. Wevers, MSc, Scientist, Model Development, Mimetas BV

Nienke Wevers was trained as a bio-pharmaceutical scientist and neuroscientist. After completing her master’s degree, Nienke started at MIMETAS where she specialized in the development of in vitro models of the human brain and human blood-brain barrier in a microfluidic platfor

Guangqing Xiao, PhD, Associate Director, DMPK, Takeda

A highly motivated, well-organized, and technically proficient scientist with over fifteen years’ experience in drug discovery and development. Experience in ADME, DDI, PK/PD modeling using Phoenix & SimCYP, human PK & dose projection for both small molecules and biologics. Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Cell Biology, and Postdoctoral training in drug transporters.

Predicting Drug Toxicity

Najah Abi-Gerges, Vice President, Research & Development, AnaBios

Najah Abi-Gerges, PhD, is Vice President of Research & Development at AnaBios. With over 17 years in the pharmaceutical industry, he is an innovative leader, having made substantial contributions to drug approvals. Dr Abi-Gerges is the editor for the Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods, and is also a reviewer for more than 20 peer-reviewed scientific journals and review judge panel for various science institutes and foundations. He is also co-chair of the ion channel group in the CiPA initiative

 

Flavia De Santis, Research & Development Scientist, ZeClinics

Flavia is an expert in the field of gene editing. She got her PhD from the Universitè Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris). She have a strong experience in zebrafish neurobiology and molecular biology; she perfectly controls different genome editing techniques and she is an expert of CRISPR/Cas9 applications in zebrafish. She was awarded with 3-years postdoctoral Torres-Quevedo grant in order to join ZeClinics

Michael Dunn, PhD, Senior Staff Scientist, Cardiovascular Research, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Bio coming soon…

Gary Gintant, PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Integrative Pharmacology, Integrated Science and Technology, AbbVie

Gary Gintant is a Senior Research Fellow in the Dept. of Integrative Pharmacology, Integrated Science and Technology, at AbbVie. He is involved in multiple drug discovery and safety activities and initiatives internally; external activities include various cardiac safety initiatives (such as ILSI/HESI Proarrhythmia Models Project, the Cardiac Safety Research Consortium, and the Comprehensive in Vitro Proarrhythmia Assay Initiative) while serving on various journal editorial boards, NIH study sections, and Safety Pharm. Society committees.  His research interests include cardiovascular pharmacology, cellular electrophysiology/ion channels, arrhythmias,  stem-cell derived cardiomyocytes and tissues, and biomarkers-translational medicine.  He gained his MA., M.Phil. and PhD. degrees from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, NY, and was on faculty at Wayne State Univ. School of Medicine in Detroit MI prior to joining Abbott/AbbVie. 

Pooja Jain, Senior Product Manager, Life Science Solutions, Elsevier

How can we use high quality data to support preclinical and clinical pharmaceutical development? As Senior Product manager PharmaPendium at Elsevier, I tackle this problem by driving the development of data solutions that late stage failure and protect patient safety. Looking forward to meeting you in Boston!

Vivek (Vic) Kadambi, PhD, Senior Vice President, Nonclinical Development, Blueprint Medicines

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivek-kadambi-342b4596

Volker Lauschke, PhD, MBA, Associate Professor, Group Leader in Personalized Medicine and Drug Development, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet

No bio availabl

Bo Yeon Lee, PhD, Scientific Program Manager, Office of the Director, Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Program, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health

Dr. Bo Yeon Lee is a scientific program manager at National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institute of Health (NIH) where she manages “Tissue Chips for Disease Modeling and efficacy testing” initiative and other special initiatives relevant to the Tissue Chip for Drug Screening program. Prior to joining NCATS, Dr. Lee was a scientific program analyst for the SBIR/STTR program at National Institute of Mental Health of NIH where she managed a $50 million/year portfolio in the broad area of neuroscience. Dr. Lee came to NIH with an extensive experience in private industry. In PAREXEL Consulting, Dr. Lee’s work as a regulatory affairs consultant in multiple areas of drug development included authoring regulatory documents (Investigational New Drug Applications (INDs), New Drug Applications (NDAs), etc.) and extensive interactions with a spectrum of clients and the regulatory agencies for drug approval process. As a project leader in drug discovery and development at the H. Lundbeck pharmaceuticals in Denmark, Dr. Lee has led a multidisciplinary team for bioassay development across multiple neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Lee has obtained her Ph.D. in Toxicology from Texas A&M University where she has also worked, as a postdoctoral fellow, on a novel therapy for stroke. Dr. Lee holds a degree in veterinary medicine from Chonnam National University in South Korea

Sophie Lelievre, DVM, PhD, LLM, Professor, Cancer Pharmacology, Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Lelièvre is a native of France who obtained her undergraduate degree as engineer in Veterinary Sciences from the University of Louvain (Belgium) and her D.V.M. degree from the University of Liège (Belgium) in 1990. She worked as a veterinarian in the emergency room in Paris area (France) from 1990 to 1995, while pursuing M.S. and Ph.D. graduate studies in Cancer Pharmacology at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute and University of Paris VI (Pierre & Marie Curie). Dr. Lelièvre is the 1995 recipient of (i) the National Prize for Fundamental Cancer Research/young investigator from the French Society of Cancer and National Federation of Cancer Institutes and (ii) the National Alexandre Joel Prize for young investigator from the Association for Cancer Research. During her postdoctoral training in Mina Bissell’s laboratory at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA) from 1995 to 2000, she studied the role of the organization of the cell nucleus in normal and cancerous breast epithelial cell behaviors using three-dimensional models of cell culture that recapitulate tissue organization. Dr. Lelièvre joined the Department of Basic Medical Sciences at Purdue, as a faculty member and Walther Cancer Institute Scholar, in October 2000. Her research program has been externally funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of DefenseCongressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) among other agencies. It focuses on the role of the organization of the cell nucleus in gene expression and genome stability and the relationship between tissue polarity and nuclear functions, notably epigenetics. Translational projects are targeted towards early detection and prevention of breast cancer. She was one of the three featured breast cancer researchers of the CDMRP in 2008 in recognition for her contributions to breast cancer research since her early career development funding by CDMRP in 1997. Her research accomplishments include notably, (i) the development of methods to analyze and detect phenotypes based on cell nucleus organization at the single cell level, (ii) the design of preclinical three-dimensional (3D) cell culture models including organson-a-chip to be used for screening protective agents against breast cancer development and for the design of nanomedical tools for therapies, and (iii) the identification of early breast tissue alterations necessary for cancer development and related new potential targets for breast cancer prevention and treatment. In 2015, she created the 3D Cell Culture Core (3D3C) Facility at Purdue University with the aim of bringing engineers and biologists together to design better models for research on chronic diseases. To better integrate public health related disciplines to her research projects, Dr. Lelièvre completed a Master’s degree in Law, Health and Ethics from a EuroPubhealth and Erasmus Mundus international program in 2008 at the University of Rennes (France). She initiated an international and multidisciplinary program on primary prevention of breast cancer (www.purdue.edu/IBCN) in 2009 that has received logistic support from the World Health Organization and includes 12 partner countries and yearly symposia (www.purdue.edu/breastcancer). Dr. Lelièvre was selected as a Purdue Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy Fellow in 2009 and Scholar in 2010 and as the 2012 Discovery Learning Research Center Faculty Research Fellow to pursue aspects of this international program. For her work on cancer prevention, she was selected for an Indiana Women of Achievement Award in 2015. She is also a Purdue University Faculty Scholar and an appointed member of the NIH, NCI-I study section for K awards supporting the training of scientists toward independence in research. Dr. Lelièvre teaches Applied Pharmacology in the Purdue DVM and IU Lafayette Medical School programs. She is developing a course on International Primary Prevention Research for chronic disease at Purdue University and has been a recurring invited lecturer on cancer prevention in the international Master of Public Health of the School of Public Health in France

Merrie Mosedale, PhD, Assistant Director, Institute for Drug Safety Sciences, Research Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy

Merrie Mosedale, Ph.D., is a research assistant professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.  Mosedale is also the assistant director of the School’s Institute for Drug Safety Sciences where she leads the Translational Pharmacogenomics Research Program. Through partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and academic scientists, Mosedale is working to solve safety problems by integrating cutting-edge pharmacogenomics approaches with novel in vivo, in vitro, and  in silico platforms. Currently, Mosedale is focusing on the application of 1) mouse genetics to identify individual susceptibilities to adverse drug reactions in humans, 2) organotypic culture models to understand mechanisms of drug toxicities, and 3) exosome biology to predict toxicity liabilities earlier in drug development. Findings from her research highlight the potential for these novel approaches to improve human risk assessment in drug-safety testing as well as to provide mechanistic insights into drug toxicity. She has been recognized for her work by the Society of Toxicology and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics

William Proctor, PhD, Senior Scientist, Head of Investigative Toxicology, Department of Safety Assessment, Genentech

Will Proctor is an Associate Director/Senior Scientist and Head of Investigative Toxicology in the Department of Safety Assessment at Genentech.  Prior to joining Genentech in 2013, Will earned his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the laboratory of Dr. Dhiren Thakker with a focus on drug transport and pharmacokinetics.  He then performed postdoctoral training at the NIH in laboratory of Dr. Lance Pohl, focusing on immune mechanisms of drug-induced liver injury.  At Genentech, Will manages the Investigative Toxicology group, whose focus is to support preclinical safety assessment through hypothesis-driven in vitro and ex vivo mechanistic studies. 

David Rhee, MD, House Staff, Department of Internal Medicine, New York University School of Medicine

Dr. David Rhee has spent the last decade in New York, studying neuroscience at Columbia College, graduating in the inaugural class of the 3-Year MD Program at NYU School of Medicine, and now finishing his residency in Internal Medicine at NYU Langone Health. His interest is cardiology, his passion is teaching, and his motivation is improving the quality of his patient's lives. He is supported by his wonderful wife, and he is excited to spend the next year as a chief resident at NYU Internal Medicine - Brooklyn Campus. 

Anna-Karin Sjögren, PhD, Drug Safety Scientist, Drug Safety and Metabolism, Astra Zeneca

I hold an M.Sc. in Biotechnology from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg and a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from the Institute of Medicine at Sahlgrenska, Gothenburg University. I have worked in pharma industry for > 8 years and currently holds a position as Discovery Safety Specialist in CVRM Safety at AstraZeneca. I am leading projects to develop and evaluate new in vitro models and assays to investigate drug-induced kidney toxicity during early drug discovery

Katya Tsaioun, Director, Evidence-Based Toxicology Collaboration, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Dr. Tsaioun leads international multi-stakeholder efforts to establish evidence-based methodologies and practices in translational research to inform regulatory decisions. The focus of Dr. Tsaioun’s career has been on translation of scientific innovations into policies and technologies enabling improvements in public health. Dr. Tsaioun is serving on advisory boards of companies, non-profits, and on scientific review committees at the NIH and private foundations.

Laszlo Urban, MD, PhD, Global Head, Preclinical Secondary Pharmacology, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research

Laszlo Urban is Global Head of Preclinical Secondary Pharmacology (PSP) at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), Cambridge, MA, USA. He has been with Sandoz/Novartis since 1990, leading various global pharmaceutical research areas. As the founding leader of PSP, he developed and implemented the early in vitro preclinical safety profiling program for NIBR. He and his team are developing “decision support safety assessment tools” , which provide easy access to integrated information for adverse reaction mitigation. Laszlo received his M.D. and Ph.D. in neuropharmacology from Debrecen University, Hungary. He is Honorary Lecturer of the University College London and was a visiting professor at Duke University. He has published over 180 articles, book chapters and patents, edited 5 books and has served on the editorial board of several journals while also serving as President of the European Neuropeptide Club

Terry Van Vleet, PhD, DABT, Head of Molecular and Computational Toxicology, Department of Preclinical Safety, Abbvie

Dr. Van Vleet received a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology from Weber State University and a doctorate in Toxicology studying mechanisms of carcinogenesis and metabolic activation of carcinogens, at Utah State University. His postdoctoral training was at the Medical University of South Carolina, studying mechanisms of renal toxicity with an emphasis in mechanisms of mitochondrial dysfunction. Dr. Van Vleet is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology. He worked at Bristol Myers Squibb in Mt Vernon, Indiana, for 11 years in positions of increasing importance culminating as the Head of the Molecular and In Vitro Toxicology Group. Currently he works at Abbvie in Investigative Toxicology and Pathology (Preclinical Safety) where he is responsible for the Molecular, Genetic, and Computational Toxicology groups. During his career in industry, he has served as a Drug Safety Project Representative, Study Director, and Study Monitor for numerous toxicology programs. He has also identified/characterized numerous mechanisms of toxicity and has been responsible for developing novel molecular assays for evaluating potential mechanisms of toxicity using a number of computational, analytical chemistry, molecular biology, and biochemistry techniques.

Qin Wang, PhD, Scientist, Drug Safety Research and Evaluation, Takeda
https://www.linkedin.com/in/qin-wang-7802807a/

Immuno-Oncology Biomarkers 2: Immune Profiling and Immune Monitoring

 

Maria A.S. Broggi, PhD, Investigator II, Exploratory Immuno-Oncology, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

Maria Broggi is a Principal Investigator in the Immuno-Oncology Next Generation Therapeutics Group at Novartis leading a laboratory focused on investigating the role of stromal cells in regulating anti-tumor immunity during immunotherapies. Prior to that, Maria worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Prof. Melody Swartz at EPFL in Lausanne (Switzerland) and at the University of Chicago on the role of lymphatic endothelial cells in impacting anti-tumor responses both in mice and humans and for the first time extensively characterized the content of lymph of metastatic melanoma patients as a rich source of biomarker. Maria completed her PhD in Immunology/Cell Biology at the University of Basel (Switzerland) under the supervision of Prof. Simona Rossi and Prof. Ed Palmer working on the role of lymph node stromal cells in regulating T cell responses during the establishment of skin transplantation tolerance. Maria holds a M.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of Basel and a B.S. in Biotechnology from the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy).

Karen DeBalsi, PhD, Senior Study Director, Metabolon, Inc.

Dr. DeBalsi, Senior Study Director at Metabolon, interprets metabolomics studies that address scientific questions across the R&D space.  She received her Ph.D. from Duke University, where she employed targeted metabolomics to study the role of TXNIP in regulating mitochondrial function in muscle, followed by postdoctoral research in mitochondrial genetic diseases.

Russell Garlick, PhD, CSO, SeraCare Life Sciences
Dr. Garlick leads the clinical genomics and molecular diagnostics scientific affairs for LGC SeraCare in. His career spans new product development and technology development for kits and reagents using in clinical diagnostics, research products and drug development. Previously he was VP of R&D for PerkinElmer and VP of R&D for NEN Life Sciences. He has a PhD in Biomedical Sciences Medicinal Chemistry.

 

Wei Guo, PhD, Professor, Biology, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Wei Guo is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Biology. He has long-standing interest in the molecular basis and regulatory mechanisms of tumorigenesis and metastasis. He has applied the basic cell biological principles to the understanding of cancer, especially melanoma. Taking a multidisciplinary approach that combines biochemistry, biophysics, genetics, and advanced microscopic imaging, his laboratory has made discoveries that contributed to the molecular understanding of cancer metastasis, melanoma drug resistance, and more recently tumor immune evasion.

 

Alice O. Kamphorst, PhD, Assistant Professor, Oncological Sciences, Precision Immunology Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Alice O. Kamphorst, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Oncological Sciences at the Precision Immunology Institute. She is also a member of the Cancer Immunology Research Program at the Tisch Cancer Institute. She received her PhD from The Rockefeller University, studying antigen presentation and dendritic cell biology with the mentorship of Michel Nussenzweig. In her post-doctoral studies, Alice worked on T cells and PD-1 immunotherapy with Rafi Ahmed at Emory University.

 

 

Andrey Loboda, PhD, Director, Genetics and Pharmacogenomics, Merck

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrey-loboda-909b351/

 

John Lowe, MD, Principal, Lowe Consulting

John Lowe, M.D., currently serves as Principal, Lowe Consulting. He is a Board-Certified pathologist whose career includes more than 18 years as Investigator of the HHMI and Professor of Pathology at the University of Michigan Medical School and 3 years as Chair of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine/University Hospitals of Cleveland. Most recently, John served for more than 10 years as Senior Director (Department Head) of the Pathology Department at Genentech.

Francesca Milletti, PhD, Associate Director, Translational Medicine, Kite, a Gilead Company
https://www.linkedin.com/in/francescamilletti/

Jennifer J.D. Morrissette, PhD, Scientific Director, Clinical Cancer Cytogenetics, Clinical Director, Center for Personalized Diagnostics, University of Pennsylvania

Jennifer Morrissette, Ph.D. is the Scientific Director of the Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory, the Clinical Director of the Center for Personalized Diagnostics (CPD) and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA. She is certified in Clinical Molecular Diagnostics and Clinical Cytogenetics through the American Board of Medical Genetics and has been a clinical laboratory director for 10 years. Dr. Morrissette joined the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Pathology as the Scientific Director of Clinical Cancer Cytogenetics in 2010. Previous to the University of Pennsylvania, she was an Assistant Professor at Drexel University and Director of Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetic Diagnosis at St Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Dr. Morrissette was a founding member of the Center for Personalized Diagnostics, a joint initiative between the Department of Pathology and the Abramson Cancer Center.

 

 

Michael T. Tetzlaff, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Pathology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Michael Tetzlaff is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pathology (Section of Dermatopathology) and Translational and Molecular Pathology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and serves as Director of the Microscopic Imaging Laboratory.  He serves as the Executive Officer for the Translational Research Program for The Alliance for Clinical Trials, leads part of MD Anderson’s efforts within the NCI Multidisciplinary Cancer Immune Monitoring and Analysis Centers (CIMAC) and also directs the MD Anderson Melanoma Moonshot Program Immunohistochemistry and Imaging Laboratory.  He currently serves as Associate Editor for  Human Pathology and The Journal of Cutaneous Pathology and additionally serves on the Editorial Boards for  Laboratory Investigation, The American Journal of Clinical Pathology and Applied Immunohistochemistry and Molecular Morphology. His research focuses on clinical, histopathologic, molecular and immune biomarkers in cutaneous oncology with particular emphasis on anogenital melanomas, ocular-adnexal sebaceous carcinoma and Merkel cell carcinoma.

 

Theresa Whiteside, PhD, Professor, Pathology, Immunology & Otolaryngology, Hillman Cancer Center, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Dr. Whiteside received both her MA and PhD degree in Microbiology from Columbia University, New York, NY. She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Laboratory Immunology (1979). She was as a Fogarty Senior International Fellow at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne, Switzerland (1984-85).  At the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Whiteside rose through the faculty ranks to become Professor of Pathology with secondary appointments as Professor of Immunology and Otolaryngology (1989-present). She served as   Director of the Immunologic Monitoring and Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute for over 20 years. She has authored 586 peer-reviewed papers and review articles and 167 chapters and other articles.  She has trained 94 post-doctoral fellows from the United States and abroad.   She received an Honoris causa degree in Medicine from The Poznan Medical University in Poland in 2011 and was awarded a Richard V. Smalley Memorial Award by the Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer in 2012.

Digital Biomarkers: Biosensors, Wearables, and mHealth

Elnaz Atabakhsh, Product manager, Regional Sales & Marketing, Abcam

Elnaz is the Senior Product Manager for Multiplex Assays at Abcam; she is responsible for shaping the vision for product development, commercialization, and collaboration projects related to the multiplex assays portfolio. Talk to her to find out more about how the high-throughput immunoassay FirePlex-HT can accelerate your research and drug discovery.

Ashish Atreja, MD, MPH, Chief Innovation Officer, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Atreja is a healthcare executive with board certification in internal medicine, gastroenterology and clinical informatics. As Chief Innovation Officer, Medicine, he leads the Sinai AppLab (http://www.applab.nyc) that is one of the first collaborative hub within academic medical center to build and test disruptive mhealth technologies. As an intrapreneur, Dr. Atreja has won innovation awards at Cleveland Clinic and Mount Sinai, successfully licensed technologies from academic centers and advises startups, accelerators and Fortune 500 companies in digital medicine. Dr. Atreja serves as Scientific Founder for Mount Sinai Spinoff, Rx.Health that brings first enterprise-wide app curation, prescription and engagement platform to risk sharing hospitals and payers in an affordable and scalable manner. Recently, Dr. Atreja established non-profit Network of Digital Medicine (NODE.Health) to connect innovation centers worldwide and share best practices for digital medicine innovation and implementation between industry, payers and health systems. Dr. Atreja has published more than 60 papers, presented more than 200 abstracts and has been a keynote speaker globally on topics related to digital medicine evidence and health system transformation. Dr. Atreja was nominated among the Top 40 HealthCare Transformers in 2017.

 

 

Michael J. Benecky, PhD, Senior Director, Global Regulatory Affairs, Precision and Digital Medicine, R&D Chief Regulatory Office, GlaxoSmithKline

Mike received his B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Princeton University.  Mike continued his academic research career as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and as an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Medical School-Milwaukee Clinical Campus. Mike gained expertise in the preparation of FDA IDE and PMA medical device submissions for lasers used for vision correction surgery at Bio-Reg Associates.  At QIAGEN (formerly Digene), Mike led the Regulatory /Clinical Affairs Group that prepared numerous FDA PMA submissions for the first FDA approved HPV DNA test for cervical cancer screening. Mike Benecky joined GSK in October 2011 as Senior Director, Global Regulatory Affairs in Precision and Digital Medicine located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.  Mike currently assists GSK Teams in regulatory strategy during use of digital health technology in both clinical trial and commercial settings.  Recent projects include the commercial launch of the MyAsthma mobile medical app in the EU and inclusion of digital sensors and mobile apps within GSK clinical development programs.

 

Yu-Feng (Yvonne) Chan, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Genetics & Genomics Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine; Director, Digital Health & Personalized Medicine, Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mt. Sinai

Yvonne Yu-Feng Chan, MD, PhD, FACEP, is the director of the Center for Digital Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  She is a leader in mobile health and digital health research, and a board-certified Emergency physician. The mission of her Digital Health Center is to rapidly drive large-scale participation of patients and consumers in biomedical research, by leveraging the latest mobile/digital technology and advanced analytic techniques to uncover novel insights and actionable results to advance healthcare. Dr. Chan was the principal investigator for the Mount Sinai Asthma Mobile Health Study using the Asthma Health app powered by Apple’s ResearchKit framework. This pioneering virtual study of >10,000 participants from 3 countries demonstrated that a broad scale clinical study could be conducted in its entirety via a smartphone application, including remote participant recruitment, consent, prospective collection of data including geolocation, environmental and device data, as well as secure bi-directional data exchange between participants and investigators. Recently, Dr. Chan and her digital health team created and deployed a digital platform to scale Mount Sinai’s recruitment and engagement of the institution’s DNA biobank research participants. Additionally, she is also the Mount Sinai principal investigator for the NIH U01 “Practice-Based Research to Improve Self-Management Support (PRISMS) Sensor Development Projects for Pediatric Asthma study”- an innovative smartphone and biosensor device research collaboration with the Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors at Arizona State University and University of Southern California.

 

Joshua Cosman, PhD, Quantitative Medicine, Digital Innovation, Biogen

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshcosman

 

Chris Economos, Vice President, Business Development,  physIQ

Chris leads the physIQ commercial operation, including go-to-market strategy, marketing, sales and strategic partnerships. Chris brings an extensive background in developing, selling and implementing healthcare solutions that involve complex transactions across multiple stakeholders. Prior to joining physIQ, Chris was part of the leadership team at Healthy Interactions, the global leader in diabetes education and, before that, a marketing manager at AbbVie (formerly Abbott).

 

Balaji Goparaju, Data Scientist, Innovative Digital Endpoints Analytics, Novartis

https://www.linkedin.com/in/balajigoparaju 

Jeffrey Kaye, MD, Layton Professor, Neurology & Biomedical Engineering, Director, ORCATECH - Oregon Center for Aging & Technology, Oregon Health & Science University

Jeffrey Kaye is the Layton Endowed Professor of Neurology and Biomedical Engineering at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). He directs ORCATECH, the NIA - Oregon Center for Aging and Technology and the NIA - Layton Aging and Alzheimer's Disease Center at OHSU. He leads several longitudinal studies on aging and clinical trials including: the ORCATECH Life Laboratory, Ambient Independence Measures for Guiding Care Transitions, EVALUATE – AD (Ecologically Valid, Ambient, Longitudinal and Unbiased Assessment of Treatment Efficacy in Alzheimer’s Disease), and the Collaborative Aging (in Place) Research using Technology (CART) Initiative, all using pervasive computing and sensing technologies for assessment and developing interventions surrounding transitions signaling health and functional change. Dr. Kaye has received the Charles Dolan Hatfield Research Award for his work. He is listed in Best Doctors in America. He serves on many national and international panels and boards in the fields of geriatrics, neurology and technology including as a commissioner for the Center for Aging Services and Technology (CAST), on the Advisory Council of AgeTech West, the International Scientific Advisory Committee of AGE-WELL Canada, and Past Chair of the International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research & Treatment (ISTAART). He is an author of over 400 scientific publications and holds several major grant awards from federal agencies, national foundations and industrial sponsors.

Julia Keefe, Associate Director, Research Programs, Michael J. Fox Foundation
Julia Keefe is the Associate Director of Research Programs at The Michael J. Fox Foundation leading the business operations of the Therapies and Outcome Measures programs. She works closely with the team to develop a strategy and establish metrics for programmatic goals. Within the Outcome Measures Program, Julia co-leads the digital health portfolio providing complex project management to achieve MJFF’s goals of driving the development of PD-centric novel endpoints, landscape assessment of objective measures comparable to traditional clinical assessments and facilitating multi-party collaboration for the development of a PD digital biomarker.

 

Wasim Malik, PhD, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School; Managing Partner, Iaso Ventures

Wasim Q. Malik, PhD, is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Laboratory for Neuromotor Signal Processing at Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Oxford and completed postdoctoral training in computational neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received the Department of Defense Career Development Award, English Speaking Union (ESU) Lindemann Science Award, Harvard University's William F. Milton Fund Award, Huntington's Disease Society of America (HDSA) Human Biology Project Award, as well as best paper awards at research conferences. He has served on the national grant review panels of Norway, Romania, Austria, Chile and Singapore. Dr. Malik is a Core Committee member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Brain Initiative, chair of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Boston Chapter, and co-chair of the IEEE Brain Data Bank Competition 2017.

 

Carrie Northcott, PhD, Research Project Lead, Digital Medicine and Translational Imaging (DMTI), Early Clinical Development, Pfizer, Inc.

Dr. Carrie Northcott is a Senior Manager/Research Project Lead within Digital Medicine at Pfizer.  She has had a long-time interest in the use of digital technologies and machine learning.  Within her current role she was provided the opportunity to lead a team that is designing and developing mobile, sensor-based systems that when combined with analytics, will quantitatively evaluate scratching and sleep in clinical and home settings in subjects. The overarching goal of this project is to provide quantitative measures of these endpoints to share with the disease and research communities, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, to ultimately be recognized by regulators as a useful and valid clinical endpoint that provides additional value. Carrie previously held the position as a Senior Principle Scientist within Global Safety Pharmacology, Drug Safety and Research Development at Pfizer, Inc.  Prior to joining Pfizer, she was an NIH funded research faculty member at Michigan State University within the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology where she investigated intracellular neural signaling pathways regulation of blood pressure. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology from Michigan State University and her Master’s and BS degrees in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Illinois. She has published numerous scientific publications in various fields of scientific study and is actively involved in various scientific societies. 

Matt Pipke, CTO, physIQ

As CTO and cofounder at PhysIQ, Matt steers the product roadmap, focusing on the future of medicine at the intersection of machine learning and clinical applications. Prior to PhysIQ, he managed the R&D team as CTO and IP counsel at SmartSignal. In addition to his role at PhysIQ, Matt has run the company’s clinical trials and was the regulatory lead for the company’s foundational FDA clearance.

 

Ida Sim, MD, PhD, Co-Founder, Open mHealth; Professor, Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

Ida Sim, MD, PhD is a primary care physician, informatics researcher, and entrepreneur. She is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she co-directs Informatics and Research Innovation at UCSF's Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and is Director of Digital Health for the Division of General Internal Medicine. Her current research focuses on the use of mobile apps and sensors to improve health and manage disease for populations and individuals, and to make clinical research faster and less expensive. She is a co-founder of Open mHealth, a non-profit organization that is breaking down barriers to mobile health app and data integration through an open software architecture. Open mHealth is an official working group of the IEEE Standards Association and is on track to becoming a global IEEE standard.

 

Iman Tavassoly, MD, PhD, Physician-Scientist, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Iman Tavassoly, MD, PhD, is a computational and systems biologist who works on development of precision medicine modalities. His recent works have been on cancer big data analysis including exploring The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) for gene signatures of therapeutic responses in cancer. He also has developed mathematical models of cancer signaling pathways and networks in the context of precision oncology. Dr. Tavassoly’s website is: www.imantavassoly.com

 

Gergely Vértes, MBA, Solution Accelerator Lead, Wearable for Epilepsy, UCB Pharma

Economist by training, aiming to create value by building a bridge between medical/digital/big data and ensuring that the outcome is solving an unmet patient need aligned with the regulatory environment.

Small Molecules for Immuno-Oncology Therapeutics

Christopher Bunker, PhD, MBA, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Advanced Cell Diagnostics (ACD), a Bio-Techne brand

Dr. Bunker brings ten years of experience in business development with pharmaceutical/biotechnology organizations. Dr. Bunker was Dir. of Bus. Dev. at Cell Signaling Technology, Inc. (CST), where he grew the company from its initial spin-out to a $100M business. Dr. Bunker pursued cancer research at Genome Therapeutics Corp. Dr. Bunker received a Ph.D in Biological Chemistry from Harvard University, an M.B.A. from the Exec. Prog. of Boston University and received post-doctoral training in cancer molecular biology at USF.

Frank Charles Dorsey, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, Cancer Signaling and Metabolism, Eli Lilly & Co.

No bio available

Michael Drummond, PhD, Scientific Applications Manager, Chemical Computing Group

Michael Drummond received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, followed by postdoctoral appointments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of North Texas.  His current research interests include modeling PROTAC-mediated protein degradation, enzyme engineering, and QSPR for antibody developability. He is currently the Scientific Applications Manager for Chemical Computing Group.

Shelton Earp, PhD, Director, University of North Carolina Lineberger Cancer Center and Co-Founder, Meryx Pharmaceuticals

Shelton “Shelley” Earp is the Lineberger Professor of Cancer Research, Director of UNC Cancer Care and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. In these roles, he has helped develop basic, clinical and public health research and cancer care at one of the country’s premier public universities and academic medical centers. He serves as multi-Principal Investigator of the UNC Breast Cancer SPORE and PI of the U54 Partnership with North Carolina Central University. His group has discovered and studied genes involved in a range of cancers, published over 190 biomedical-research articles and has been continuously funded by NIH for over 40 years. He collaborated with the UNC Chemical Biology Center in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy to develop a new, first-in-class drug targeting one of the cancer genes discovered in his lab. Inhibition of this gene may stimulate a cancer patient’s innate immunity against their cancer. Dr. Earp has received UNC School of Medicine teaching awards and chaired national review committees for the ACS and the NCI. He has served as a past president of the American Association of Cancer Institutes and as a member of the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors and on the board of ten university cancer centers.

Kuan-Chun Huang, PhD, Associate Director, H3 Biomedicine

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kuan-chun-huang-650a3884

Radhakrishnan P. Iyer, PhD, CSO, Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals

Dr. R. P. Iyer, (Kris) is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals. He has more than 25 years’ experience in drug discovery and development in diverse fields including antivirals, inflammation, and immune-oncology. Kris is internationally recognized as an innovator in the fields of nucleic acid chemistry, bioorganic chemistry, and pharmaceutical sciences with over 100 publications and 200 issued and filed US and international patents. Prior to Spring Bank, Kris was the co-founder and VP of Discovery at Origenix Technologies.

Michelle L. Lamb, PhD, Team Leader, Chemistry, Oncology, IMED Biotech Unit, AstraZeneca, Boston

No bio available

Karen McGovern, PhD, VP, Drug Discovery, Kyn Therapeutics

Karen McGovern joined Kyn Therapeutics as VP of Drug Discovery in 2016, bringing 20+ years of industry experience. Prior to Kyn, she worked at Infinity Pharmaceuticals where she was the biology lead on multiple early discovery projects including the PI3K Gamma and Hedgehog programs, leading from preclinical through early clinical development. Karen directed the biology and pharmacology groups where the immuno-oncology approaches were established, in collaboration with academic leaders in the field, leading to key mechanistic understanding and strategies for clinical development for the PI3K gamma program. Prior to that, Karen was at Millennium Pharmaceutics in both systems biology and anti-infectives groups. Karen earned her B.S. from Boston College and her Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School.

Frank Parlati, PhD, Vice President, Research, Calithera Biosciences

Dr. Parlati joined Calithera in 2012 and currently serves as Vice President of Research. Prior to joining Calithera, Dr. Parlati was Founder and Senior Director of Biology at Cleave Biosciences, a biotechnology company developing novel protein degradation inhibitors for the treatment of cancer. Prior to Cleave Biosciences, Dr. Parlati was a visiting scientist at the California Institute of Technology. Previously, Dr. Parlati held various scientific roles at Proteolix, including Director of Biology. Prior to Proteolix, Dr. Parlati was a member of the scientific team at Rigel Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Parlati received a B.S. in Chemistry from Concordia University, a Ph.D. in Biology from McGill University, and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

Sheena Pinto, PhD, Senior Scientist, Drug Discovery, Phenex Pharmaceuticals

https://de.linkedin.com/in/sheena-pinto-2ab61364

Brandon Rosen, PhD, Senior Scientist, Chemistry, Arcus Biosciences

Brandon Rosen has been a scientist in the department of Medicinal Chemistry at Arcus Biosciences since January 2015. At Arcus, he has worked on multiple programs against immuno-oncology targets, including the dual A2aR/A2bR antagonist AB928, the selective A2aR antagonist AB745, and the CD73 inhibitor AB680. Prior to joining Arcus, Brandon completed his Ph.D. at The Scripps Research Institute under the direction of Professor Phil Baran, where he studied the total synthesis of terpenes of mixed biosynthetic origin and developed new methods for electro-organic chemistry.

Gottfried Schroeder, PhD, Senior Scientist, Department of Pharmacology, Merck Research Labs Boston

Dr. Gottfried Schroeder joined the Biochemistry and Biophysics group at Merck-Boston in 2012.  Since that time Gottfried has applied a wide range of biophysical techniques coupled with automation to projects in multiple disease areas from the early discovery through pre-clinical candidate space.  These efforts encompassed small scale screening to in-depth mechanism of action studies, including several clinical assets.  In 2015, Gottfried assumed a leadership role in surface plasmon resonance (SPR) at the Boston site providing continued support for multiple pre-clinical and clinical programs spanning small molecule, peptide, and oligonucleotide modalities.  Dr. Schroeder received his doctorate (UNC-Chapel Hill) under Richard Wolfenden with a focus on enzymology and biophysics.  His post-doctoral work at UT-Austin with Chris Whitman and Kenneth Johnson (collaboration) centered on advanced transient state kinetics methods and enzyme mechanism.  Gottfried’s current interests include further integration and application of SPR data to the drug discovery process.

David H. Sherr, PhD, Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Boston University

Dr. Sherr received his B.A. from Brandeis University in 1973 and his PhD from Cornell University in 1978. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in the laboratories of Drs. Baruj Benacerraf (Nobel Laureate, 1980) and Martin Dorf from 1978 to 1981, after which he was appointed to the position of Assistant Professor (1982) and then Associate Professor (1987) of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. In 1993 Dr. Sherr was recruited to Boston University as Professor of Environmental Health and Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Since that time he has studied the role of the AHR in immune cell development and in tumorigenesis, specifically with regard to its role in production and function of immunosuppressive immune cells. He has published 126 peer-reviewed manuscripts and his laboratory has been continually funded by the NIH since 1986. He has trained 26 postdoctoral and 13 predoctoral fellows and 8 undergraduates, has served on 67 doctoral committees, and has won The Boston University School of Public Health Excellence in Teaching Award 3 times.

Hongwei Wang, MD, PhD, Executive Medical Director, Curis, Inc

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hongwei-wang-1309bb7

Cancer Immunotherapy Models

Elena Ivanova, PhD, Senior Scientist, Medical Oncology, Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Elena Ivanova is a Senior Scientist at the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She received her PhD from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, and did postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Ivanova is greatly interested in the imaging and microscopy. Through her carrier she used different imaging applications from studying mechanisms of chromosomal instability and tumorigenesis by Spectral Karyotyping to evaluating immune- and targeted therapy by imaging in 3D culture systems.

Russell W. Jenkins, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts General Hospital

No bio available

Barbara Joyce-Shaikh, Associate Principal Scientist, Merck Research Laboratories

https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-joyce-shaikh-52b9a513

Roger D Kamm, PhD, Green Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Biological Engineering, Depts. of Mechanical Engineering and Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kamm’s interests lie at the interface of biology and mechanics, formerly in cell and molecular mechanics, and now in micro-physiological systems to model cancer and neurodegenerative disease.  Kamm has fostered biomechanics as Chair of the US National Committee on Biomechanics and of the World Council on Biomechanics and currently directs the NSF Center on Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems. He is a recipient of the Lissner Medal and the the Huiskes Medal, both for lifetime achievements, and is the inaugural recipient of the Nerem Medal for mentoring and education. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2010. Kamm is founder of AIM Biotech, a company that markets microfluidics for 3D cell culture systems.

Kathleen Kelly, PhD, Lab Chief, Laboratory of Genitourinary Cancer Pathogenesis, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute

Dr. Kelly received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. She completed her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Philip Leder, Harvard Medical School, and she has maintained an independent research program at the NCI since 1984. Dr. Kelly's interests have focused on the genetic regulation of cell growth, cancer progression and metastasis.

Tania (Tali) Konry, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Northeastern University

Dr. Konry’s laboratory at Northeastern University is focused on developing novel Bio-MEMS approaches to advance point of care diagnostics, cell culture and drug screening and delivery methods. She has developed Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) devices that integrate several laboratory functions such as real time monitoring of target clinically relevant analyte, proteomics, genomics, cell-cell interactions as well as cell secretion and surface monitoring of single cells on a micro-chip. Her single cell project was awarded with R21/NIH/NCI and R33/NIH/IMAT/NCI. Dr.Konry was nominated as Phase 1 Finalist of Follow That Cell Challenge/NIH and spotlighted in GEN magazine on her work in single-cell work. She also was recognized with Schumacher Faculty Award, presented to one faculty member early in their Northeastern career for significant academic achievement at Northeastern University and received a competitive BD Biosciences immunology research award for analyzing immune-tumor cell interactions in dynamics with single cell resolution.

Jungwoo Lee, PhD, Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering Department & Institute for Applied Life Sciences, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Jungwoo Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and a principle investigator in the Institute of Applied Life Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan and post-doctoral training at the Center for Engineering in Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and Shriners Hospitals in Children at Boston. His group at Umass-Amherst with core expertise in biomaterials, micro-fabrication, cellular engineering, and biomedical imaging, aims to create tissue-engineered bone marrow mimics for better understanding bone marrow tissue biology and translational opportunities for stem cell and cancer research. He published over 30 papers in the field of biomaterials and tissue engineering. His research has been supported by National Cancer Institute.

Danilo Maddalo, PhD, Lab Head, ONC Pharmacology, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Novartis Pharma AG

Danilo Maddalo obtained his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Karlsruhe (Germany). He thereafter joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, USA) as research fellow where he generated a CRISPR-induced mouse model of oncogenic chromosomal rearrangements. He finally moved to Novartis (Basel, Switzerland) where he currently leads a laboratory focusing on pharmacology and generation of preclinical models.

Raymond R Mattingly, PhD, Professor and Chair of Pharmacology, Wayne State University School of Medicine

Dr. Ray Mattingly is Professor of Pharmacology and Oncology and Chair of the Pharmacology Department at Wayne State University.  His research is centered on the identification of effective, new therapeutic approaches to cancers that are driven through activation of Ras signal transduction pathways in the absence of direct oncogenic mutation of Ras.  This mechanistic strand underlies both type 1 neurofibromatosis (NF1) and many cases of breast cancer.  With the support of a Komen for the Cure award, he established three-dimensional (3D) cell culture models of multiple sub-types of human breast cancer in order to provide tractable and relevant systems in which to identify targeted therapeutics.  In subsequent NCI-funded work, he has optimized and validated findings in animal models and patient samples with the goal of translating the work into the clinic.  In the context of NF1, he has developed co-culture 3D models of plexiform neurofibromas through the Neurofibromatosis Therapeutic Acceleration Program (NTAP), which includes collaboration with National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) for screening of compound libraries

Louis Scampavia, PhD, Senior Scientific Director of HTS Chemistry and Technologies, Scripps Research

Dr. Louis Scampavia is a faculty member at Scripps Research within the Department of Molecular Medicine; leveraging nearly four decades of research experience.  Having been at the Scripps Florida at its very inception, he currently serves as the Senior Scientific Director of HTS Chemistry and Technologies. The Scripps Molecular Screening HTS Center is focused on drug discovery to support academic investigators and industrial partners. Duties include establishing collaborations with other biomedical researchers to facilitate the development of screening assays for HTS compatibility; having the ultimate goal of discovering novel therapeutics or repurposing current ones. Dr. Scampavia currently serves as an investigator on a number of NIH grants and has also often served as a NIH/NCI peer grant reviewer.

Katrin Schlie, Business Development Manager, ProQinase

Dr. Katrin Schlie is part of the business development team of ProQinase, a division of Reaction Biology Corporation. By training, Katrin is a biologist specialized in the areas of virology, immunology and cell biology. She investigated the structural biology of hemorrhagic Lassa fever virus and uncovered the importance of autophagy in T cells to form immunological memory. Further, Katrin obtained her Master of Business Administration with a focus on marketing. She is responsible for client support and business development of the North American market.

Christian Schmees, PhD, Head of Tumor Biology, Molecular Biology Department, NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Tübingen

Christian Schmees, Ph.D., is heading the Tumor Biology group at NMI. His responsibilities encompass technology development, management of ongoing projects, strategic planning and budgeting. Current projects in his group focus on the generation of cellular model systems of different types of cancer and their combination with RNAi and gene editing approaches for phenotypic analyses, compound testing and expression profiling. Dr. Schmees received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Tuebingen University. He holds a PhD in cancer immunology from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. His thesis resulted in the identification of gamma-glutamyl-transpeptidase as the major factor for T cell specific immune evasion of the tumorigenic bacterium Helicobacter pylori. As a postdoctoral fellow he joined the laboratories of Dr. Carl-Henrik Heldin at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) in Uppsala, Sweden and Dr. Philippe Bastiaens at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany. He received fellowships from the German Research Foundation and the LICR to support his research on differential regulation of intracellular PDGF α- and β-receptor trafficking. His work showed for the first time that transformation by oncogenic Ras induces the internalization of the PDGF β-receptor by macropinocytosis, enhancing its signaling activity and increasing anchorage-independent proliferation

Aleksander Skardal, PhD, Assistant Professor, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine

Dr. Aleksander Skardal received his B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2005 and his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Utah in 2010. He is an Assistant Professor of Regenerative Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, Cancer Biology, and Molecular Medicine and Translational Science, and is an affiliate faculty member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. His research focuses on using customizable biomaterials and biofabrication techniques to create tissue and tumor model systems for drug and toxicology testing, to explore biological phenomena such as metastatic tumor growth, and improve precision medicine practices. He has led a number of funded studies focused on tumor organoid models, including developing microfluidic devices for drug screening and toxicology testing, generation of patient-derived tumor organoids for personalized drug screening, and a current NCI-funded project that studies evolution of tumor heterogeneity in response to therapy ex vivo. He was an investigator and team lead on a 5-year, $20 million Defense Thread Reduction Agency-funded body-on-a-chip program. Outside of organoid-based research, Dr. Skardal’s lab also focuses on bioprinting technologies. Dr. Skardal is the PI of a 5-year, $4 million Dept. of Defense contract through the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium aimed towards developing a novel biomaterial bioink system for bioprinting that is compatible across bioprinting platforms with the goal to accelerate the realization of biomanufacturing of tissue products for human use. The results of these projects have led to publication of manuscripts in a variety of high-ranking journals, a series of patents and patent applications, licensed technologies, and several currently commercially available biomedical products.

Applying 3D Models

 

Jason Ekert, PhD, MBA, Head, Complex In Vitro Models, GlaxoSmithKline

I head the Complex In Vitro Models group in the R&D Platform Technology & Sciences organization at GlaxoSmithKline. I lead an integrated enterprise strategy for sustained, portfolio driven growth in R&D applications of human-relevant and translatable complex in vitro models (eg Spheroids, Organoids, MPS and bioprinting). Before coming to GSK I spent 11 years at Janssen BioTherapeutics in early biotherapeutic drug discovery in target discovery, drug validation and MOA studies applying complex cell-based assays across multiple therapeutic areas. My current focus at GSK is to improve predictive validity of early preclinical models leading to better characterized molecules, decreased R&D cycle time and a reduction in attrition.

Elena Ivanova, PhD, Senior Scientist, Medical Oncology, Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Elena Ivanova is a Senior Scientist at the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She received her PhD from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, and did postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Ivanova is greatly interested in the imaging and microscopy. Through her carrier she used different imaging applications from studying mechanisms of chromosomal instability and tumorigenesis by Spectral Karyotyping to evaluating immune- and targeted therapy by imaging in 3D culture systems.

Aaron Goldman, PhD , Director, Drug Resistance Group, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Faculty and Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Breast Cancer Alliance Early Career Investigator, Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology

Our research at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School is focused on developing an understanding of how cancer cells respond and resist cancer chemo and immunotherapies. We seek to fully interrogate the entire tumor ecosystem, which encompasses tumor cells, the microenvironment around it, and even the role that normal cells contribute to the progression of cancer under drug pressure. To do this, we engage a unique interdisciplinary team of scientists to provide a complete picture of drug response and resistance in a patient's tumor.

Russell W. Jenkins, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts General Hospital

No bio available

Roger D Kamm, PhD, Green Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Biological Engineering, Depts. of Mechanical Engineering and Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kamm’s interests lie at the interface of biology and mechanics, formerly in cell and molecular mechanics, and now in micro-physiological systems to model cancer and neurodegenerative disease.  Kamm has fostered biomechanics as Chair of the US National Committee on Biomechanics and of the World Council on Biomechanics and currently directs the NSF Center on Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems. He is a recipient of the Lissner Medal and the the Huiskes Medal, both for lifetime achievements, and is the inaugural recipient of the Nerem Medal for mentoring and education. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2010. Kamm is founder of AIM Biotech, a company that markets microfluidics for 3D cell culture systems.

Kathleen Kelly, PhD, Lab Chief, Laboratory of Genitourinary Cancer Pathogenesis, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute

Dr. Kelly received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. She completed her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Philip Leder, Harvard Medical School, and she has maintained an independent research program at the NCI since 1984. Dr. Kelly's interests have focused on the genetic regulation of cell growth, cancer progression and metastasis.

Tania (Tali) Konry, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Northeastern University

Dr. Konry’s laboratory at Northeastern University is focused on developing novel Bio-MEMS approaches to advance point of care diagnostics, cell culture and drug screening and delivery methods. She has developed Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) devices that integrate several laboratory functions such as real time monitoring of target clinically relevant analyte, proteomics, genomics, cell-cell interactions as well as cell secretion and surface monitoring of single cells on a micro-chip. Her single cell project was awarded with R21/NIH/NCI and R33/NIH/IMAT/NCI. Dr.Konry was nominated as Phase 1 Finalist of Follow That Cell Challenge/NIH and spotlighted in GEN magazine on her work in single-cell work. She also was recognized with Schumacher Faculty Award, presented to one faculty member early in their Northeastern career for significant academic achievement at Northeastern University and received a competitive BD Biosciences immunology research award for analyzing immune-tumor cell interactions in dynamics with single cell resolution.

Sophie Lelievre, DVM, PhD, LLM, Professor, Cancer Pharmacology, Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Lelièvre is a native of France who obtained her undergraduate degree as engineer in Veterinary Sciences from the University of Louvain (Belgium) and her D.V.M. degree from the University of Liège (Belgium) in 1990. She worked as a veterinarian in the emergency room in Paris area (France) from 1990 to 1995, while pursuing M.S. and Ph.D. graduate studies in Cancer Pharmacology at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute and University of Paris VI (Pierre & Marie Curie). Dr. Lelièvre is the 1995 recipient of (i) the National Prize for Fundamental Cancer Research/young investigator from the French Society of Cancer and National Federation of Cancer Institutes and (ii) the National Alexandre Joel Prize for young investigator from the Association for Cancer Research. During her postdoctoral training in Mina Bissell’s laboratory at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA) from 1995 to 2000, she studied the role of the organization of the cell nucleus in normal and cancerous breast epithelial cell behaviors using three-dimensional models of cell culture that recapitulate tissue organization. Dr. Lelièvre joined the Department of Basic Medical Sciences at Purdue, as a faculty member and Walther Cancer Institute Scholar, in October 2000. Her research program has been externally funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of DefenseCongressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) among other agencies. It focuses on the role of the organization of the cell nucleus in gene expression and genome stability and the relationship between tissue polarity and nuclear functions, notably epigenetics. Translational projects are targeted towards early detection and prevention of breast cancer. She was one of the three featured breast cancer researchers of the CDMRP in 2008 in recognition for her contributions to breast cancer research since her early career development funding by CDMRP in 1997. Her research accomplishments include notably, (i) the development of methods to analyze and detect phenotypes based on cell nucleus organization at the single cell level, (ii) the design of preclinical three-dimensional (3D) cell culture models including organson-a-chip to be used for screening protective agents against breast cancer development and for the design of nanomedical tools for therapies, and (iii) the identification of early breast tissue alterations necessary for cancer development and related new potential targets for breast cancer prevention and treatment. In 2015, she created the 3D Cell Culture Core (3D3C) Facility at Purdue University with the aim of bringing engineers and biologists together to design better models for research on chronic diseases. To better integrate public health related disciplines to her research projects, Dr. Lelièvre completed a Master’s degree in Law, Health and Ethics from a EuroPubhealth and Erasmus Mundus international program in 2008 at the University of Rennes (France). She initiated an international and multidisciplinary program on primary prevention of breast cancer (www.purdue.edu/IBCN) in 2009 that has received logistic support from the World Health Organization and includes 12 partner countries and yearly symposia (www.purdue.edu/breastcancer). Dr. Lelièvre was selected as a Purdue Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy Fellow in 2009 and Scholar in 2010 and as the 2012 Discovery Learning Research Center Faculty Research Fellow to pursue aspects of this international program. For her work on cancer prevention, she was selected for an Indiana Women of Achievement Award in 2015. She is also a Purdue University Faculty Scholar and an appointed member of the NIH, NCI-I study section for K awards supporting the training of scientists toward independence in research. Dr. Lelièvre teaches Applied Pharmacology in the Purdue DVM and IU Lafayette Medical School programs. She is developing a course on International Primary Prevention Research for chronic disease at Purdue University and has been a recurring invited lecturer on cancer prevention in the international Master of Public Health of the School of Public Health in France.

Louis Scampavia, PhD, Senior Scientific Director of HTS Chemistry and Technologies, Scripps Research

Dr. Louis Scampavia is a faculty member at Scripps Research within the Department of Molecular Medicine; leveraging nearly four decades of research experience.  Having been at the Scripps Florida at its very inception, he currently serves as the Senior Scientific Director of HTS Chemistry and Technologies. The Scripps Molecular Screening HTS Center is focused on drug discovery to support academic investigators and industrial partners. Duties include establishing collaborations with other biomedical researchers to facilitate the development of screening assays for HTS compatibility; having the ultimate goal of discovering novel therapeutics or repurposing current ones. Dr. Scampavia currently serves as an investigator on a number of NIH grants and has also often served as a NIH/NCI peer grant reviewer.

Hervé Tiriac, PhD, Associate Project Scientist, Department of Surgery, UC San Diego

My research interests include developing systems and platforms for precision medicine that may be utilized in the fight against pancreatic cancer. As a translational scientist I focused my efforts on human-derived organoids and optimized therapeutic and diagnostic platforms amenable to this ex-vivo culture system. I first helped develop the conditions to establish viable organoids derived from surgical samples, and later I optimized this method to establish organoids from fine needle aspirates and core biopsies. This enabled study of the full spectrum of pancreatic cancer patients as the majority of patients are diagnosed with metastatic disease and are therefore ineligible for surgery. Now I am developing organoid-based assays to identify effective treatments for individual patients and uncover mechanisms of drug-sensitivity and resistance. 

Piotr Walczak, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Radiology, Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Piotr Walczak is an Assistant Professor in the Johns Hopkins Medicine Department of Radiology and Radiological Science. He specializes in magnetic resonance research and neuroradiology, with an emphasis on stem and progenitor cell trancolinsplantation. Dr. Walczak received his M.D. in 2002 from the Medical University of Warsaw in Poland. He then completed a research fellowship in cell-based therapy for neurodegenerative disorders at the University of South Florida. After a fellowship in cellular imaging at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Walczak joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins in 2008. He is an affiliated faculty member at the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s F.M. Kirby Research Center.

Qin Wang, PhD, Scientist, Drug Safety Research and Evaluation, Takeda
https://www.linkedin.com/in/qin-wang-7802807a/

Nienke Wevers, Scientist/PhD Candidate, Mimetas

My work combines project management with hands-on lab work. I have a passion for transferring knowledge, collaborations with industry, and exploring the human brain. I specialize in the development of three-dimensional in vitro models of the human brain and blood-brain barrier. These models can be used to evaluate efficacy and toxicity of new drug candidates or developmental/aetiological processes.

 

Guangqing Xiao, PhD, Associate Director, DMPK, Takeda

A highly motivated, well-organized, and technically proficient scientist with over fifteen year’s experience in drug discovery and development. Experience in ADME, DDI, PK/PD modeling using Phoenix & SimCYP, human PK & dose projection for both small molecules and biologics. Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Cell Biology, and Postdoctoral training in drug transporters.

Yuan Zhang, PhD, Vice President, Pharmalegacy
Dr. Zhang had more than 20 years’ translational research experience both in academic and industrial in the areas of cancer, immunity and inflammation diseases in Australia. After his returning to China, Dr. Zhang is currently a VP of Pharmalegacy, a Shanghai China based CRO. Pharmalegacy is a premier in vivo pharmacology and equipped to obtain higher-quality pharmacological data across a greater number of diseases than any other CRO. Dr. Zhang has helped hundreds of clients with IND filings to both FDA and CFDA (China) for their therapeutic biologics candidates in a variety of immune disease and oncology.

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