12 - 14 September 2006, Le Palace Hilton Geneva , Geneva, Switzerland
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Calendar of Events
bioLOGIC Europe 2008 ~ Geneva
World Drug Safety Congress Europe ~ London
European BioPharm Scale-Up Congress 2008 ~ Geneva
Exploratory Clinical Development World Americas ~ Philadelphia
World Vaccine Congress Lyon 2008 ~ Lyon
World Vaccine Congress Australia 2008 ~ Sydney
Oncology Drug Development World Europe 2008 ~ London

More events >

Speakers      

Dr Dorothee Ambrosius,
Director, Downstream Development,
Boehringer Ingelheim


Dorothee Ambrosius joined Boehringer Ingelheim in 2003 and she is currently heading the downstream development department at Boehringer Ingelheim in Biberach.
The downstream department is responsible for the development of robust and economic purification processes for biopharmaceutical medicines derived from mammalian cell culture starting from bench scale up to 2000L GMP scale for generation of clinical grade material.

Dorothee has a broad expertise in Biochemistry / Protein Chemistry and over 15 years of experience in identification and development of novel biopharmaceutical proteins (antibodies and proteins factors) from different sources. She completed her PhD in Biology at the RWTH in Aachen and joint Boehringer-Mannheim, Biotechnology Research Center in 1989. She held several research management positions at Boehringer-Mannheim and Roche in the area of recombinant protein production. She was responsible for development of novel therapeutic proteins including protein refolding, protein characterization and process development as well as for structural elucidation and assay development for identification and generation of new low molecular weight compounds.


Prof Tudor Arvinte,
-,
University of Geneva


Dr Gianni Baer,
Scientific Director,
Laboratoires Serono SA


Dr Steve Berezenko,
Director, Research and Development,
Delta Biotechnology


Professor John Birch,
Chief Scientific Officer,
Lonza Biologics


John Birch graduated in microbiology from London University where he also completed a Ph.D. After a period lecturing at the University he moved into industry, holding senior technical positions at Tate and Lyle, G.D. Searle, Celltech and Lonza. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer, Lonza Biopharmaceuticals. His scientific interests have focused on the production of therapeutic proteins, particularly from mammalian cells and he has published extensively in this field. He is a visiting Professor in the Department of Biochemical Engineering at University College London.

Dr Crawford Brown,
Chief Executive Officer,
Eden Biodesign


Crawford is CEO of Eden Biodesign (contract development and manufacturing services) and leads Eden Biopharm consulting services now established one of Europe’s largest and most successful specialist biopharmaceutical technical-regulatory consultancies.

In 2004 Eden raised £5m equity capital from an investment syndicate led by Stephens Inc, the largest privately held investment banking firm outside of Wall Street. Additionally, Eden successfully won the European-wide UK government tender to lease and operate the UK National Biomanufacturing Centre a £30 million project sponsored by the North West Development Agency, the European Regional Development Fund and the UK Department of Trade and Industry.

Crawford has been involved with the Biotech sector for over 20 years having held senior positions in product development at Celltech-Medeva Pharma (Liverpool), British Biotech (Oxford) and Wellcome Biotech (Beckenham, Kent). At Medeva, as Director of Product Development, he established one of the UK’s largest product development teams that were the first in the UK to take a recombinant vaccine from the laboratory through to approval by the European Medicines Control Agency (EMEA).

Crawford qualified from Strathclyde University with a BSc in Applied Microbiology and a PhD in Chemical and Process Engineering. He is a Senior Visiting Lecturer on Modular Training for the Bioprocess Industries (MBI) course at the Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering. University College, London.

Crawford has completed assignments over the past five years in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the USA. The focus of assignments is exclusively biopharmaceutical development including therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, gene therapy and stem cell/tissue engineered products.


Dr Henry Charlton,
Technical Support Manager,
Prometic Biosciences


Dr. Henry Charlton heads the Technical Support and Product Management group at ProMetic Biosciences, and has over 10 years of accumulated experience of separations technologies, process research and development, and implementation of manufacturing processes in the biopharmaceutical industry. Dr. Charlton gained his Masters Degree in Biochemical Engineering at the University College London, and his Ph.D. at the University of Aston in Birmingham, where he studied the impact of cell culture events on downstream processes in collaboration with GlaxoSmithkline. He subsequently further developed his extensive knowledge regarding feasible implementation of industrial bioprocesses by successfully developing and installing full-scale manufacturing steps at GlaxoSmithkline’s Biopharmaceutical Development Division, and later with Millipore Corporation.

Dr Laura Chirica,
Product Manager BioProcess,
GE Healthcare Biosciences


Dr Christopher Dale,
Vice President Technology,
Cambrex


Prof Dr Rainer Fischer,
Department Head,
Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology & Applied Ecology


I am currently Department Head of the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology (RWTH Aachen, Germany, 70 employees) and Senior Executive Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (170 employees including the US CMB). My expertise covers many areas of Molecular Biotechnology including Genomics, Proteomics, Cellomics, Protein Engineering, Molecular Medicine, Immunology, Virology, Plant Biotechnology, as well as Production and Purification of recombinant proteins.
Over the past five years I have built the Fraunhofer IME in Aachen, Germany, its subsidiary the Fraunhofer CMB in Newark, DE, USA as well as the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology at the Technical University (RWTH) Aachen. I’ve more then tripled my number of employees over the last four years and have raised over 140 million USD from Europe and abroad. As Head of the University Department of Molecular Biotechnology at RWTH in Aachen Institute I established a new Bachelor and Masters programs on Molecular Biotechnology and graduated 50 MS in addition to 25 PhD students.
Furthermore I have made over 200 scientific presentations around the globe and written over 100 peer reviewed scientific publications. I have more than 35 published book chapters and recently an entire book. Additionally, I hold over 20 pending patent applications and five granted patents.


Dr Christine Gebski,
Senior Process Applications Specialist,
Applied Biosystems


I am currently the Applications Manager supporting POROS chromatography media products and our customer base. Prior to joining AB, I was a Development Scientist for 15 years responsible for developing, scaling and transferring downstream purification processes, from clarification through lyophilization. I gained my industrial experience at Genzyme, Transkaryotic Therapies (TKT) and EMD Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology venture owned by Merck KGaA.

Dr Stephan Hellwig,
Head of Department, Integrated Production Platforms,
Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology & Applied Ecology


Mr Hans Huber,
Technology Agent - Biopharmacetuical Production,
Boehringer Ingelheim Austria


Hans Huber did his degree in Biotechnology at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria. In 1999, he started at Boehringer Ingelheim Austria as a bioprocess engineer in the Process Science Team. In 2002, he became head of the Microbial Fermentation Development Group, in which he was responsible for development and scale-up of fermentation processes for recombinant proteins and therapeutic plasmids. In 2006, Hans Huber became Technology Agent. In this new function he is now responsible for the evaluation, development and implementation of enabling technologies for manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals.

Dr Lothar Jacob,
Marketing Manager Process Separations,
Merck KGaA


Dr. Lothar Jacob has more than 20 years of experience in the design and operation of protein purification processes. He is responsible for the worldwide Fractogel® tentacle resin business. Prior to joining Merck KGaA, Dr Jacob was a scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. He received his PhD degree in Molecular Genetics from the University of Mainz/Germany in the field of molecular genetics. He is author of several articles, book chapters, and presentations on practical issues pertinent to industrial downstream purification. Dr. Jacob conducts internal and external training sessions on biochromatography and related down stream processing issues.

Dr Avinoam Kadouri,
Consultant, Manufacturing,
Laboratoires Serono S.A.


Dr Kadouri is one of the leading scientists in Industrial biotechnology with world wide reputation. He has 15 years of experience as R&D Director and world wide Process development Director in Serono International, Switzerland
Currently, Dr. Kadouri is the CEO of Rainbow Biotechnologies and the Chairman of ACTIP (animal cell technology industrial platform), an important European organisation of the major Biotech Companies in Europe. He is a member of several Scientific Advisory Boards of biotech companies in US, Europe and Israel.
Prior to joining the Industry Dr. Kadouri spent many years in a leading research Institutes Universities and as an Associate Professor.


Dr Bo Kara,
Head of Expression and Cell Sciences,
Avecia


Bo Kara is Head of Expression and Cell Sciences at Avecia Biotechnology. This comprises the Molecular Biology/Gene Expression , Microbial Fermentation and Mammalian Cell Culture process development/scale-up groups. Bo has 20 years expertise with ICI, Zeneca, AstraZeneca and Avecia, in designing research and development programmes to develop scaleable and validatable manufacturing processes for recombinant protein products. He has developed a keen understanding of the technical, regulatory and commercial issues faced at each stage of the development of manufacturing process for biopharmaceuticals.
Avecia’s biologics capabilities, centred at Billingham UK, include process development services in microbial and mammalian cell derived protein therapeutics and “fast track” cGMP contract manufacture of microbial derived protein-based pharmaceuticals- clinical supply through to large scale commercial supply.

Prior to joining Avecia Biotechnology in August 2000, Bo Kara was Team Leader, Biotherapeutic Process Development and Technology Transfer at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, UK for both microbial and cell culture derived biotherapeutics.

Bo Kara was previously a Scientist at BRF International, UK involved with brewing research and development (1986-1987).


Dr Eli Keshavarz-Moore,
Reader, Biochemical Engineering,
University College London


Dr Hans-Peter Knopf,
Head, Protein Expression Technologies,
Novartis Pharma


Hans-Peter received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology at the Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Germany, working in conjunction with the University Clinic and the Max-Planck Institute of Immunology. During 1994/5 he was Post Doc at the Max Planck Institute of Immunology, Freiburg, focused on the characterization of primary human monocytes and macrophages.

Hans-Peter joined Novartis AG in 1995 as a lab head in cell and molecular biology. As he was responsible for the development of cell lines, cell banking and molecular biological analytics, he was involved in the registration procedures for biopharmaceuticals. From 1999 to 2005 he served as a group head in Cell and Molecular Biology, where he was responsible for the development of expression vectors and production cell lines and all cGMP related aspects. Currently, Hans-Peter is head of a protein expression group focused to evaluate and manage all aspects of new technologies used to drive the expression systems beyond the current limits.


Dr Sakis Mantalaris,
Lecturer,
Imperial College London


Dr Friedrich Nachtmann,
Head Cooperations Biopharmaceuticals,
Sandoz GmbH, Austria


Study of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Technical University in Graz/Austria

Ph. D in Technical Chemistry 1977

Associate Professor at University Linz/Austria since 1984

Various functions in QA, Licensing, Business Development, R&D at Biochemie/Austria from 1977 – 2003

Since 2003 Head of Cooperations Biopharmaceuticals at Sandoz Austria


Prof Sven Panke,
Assistant Professor Bioprocess Engineering,
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ),


Sven Panke has been Assistant Professor for Bioprocess Technology at the Institute of Process Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology since 1st October 2001.
He was born on December 26th 1967 in Germany in Braunschweig, where he lived until his “Abitur” in 1987. After two years of state service in Hamburg he moved back to Braunschweig to start in the recently established biotechnology program of the Technical University of Braunschweig. After his Vordiplom, he joined the group of Prof. Timmis at the German National Research Center for Biotechnology and worked for two years on the ecology of microbial degradation of xenobiotics. For his thesis project in molecular biology he moved to the lab of Dr. de Lorenzo at the CIB in Madrid. After finishing his studies in Januar 1995, he joined the Institute of Biotechnology and the lab of Prof. Witholt at ETH-Hönnggerberg to work on the production of fine chemicals with recombinant bacteria. He put this experience to practice when the Dutch chemical company DSM recruited him in 1999. Two years later, he moved back to Zurich to the ETH to become an assistant professor.
The bioprocess group at the Institute of Process Engineering is trying to design integrated bioprocesses. It aims at creating quasi-natural conditions in processes to optimally exploit the amazing synthetic capabilities of enzymes and microorganisms for the production of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. For this, the concepts of process and genetic engineering are exploited concomitantly.


Dr Helene Pora,
Vaccine Application Development Director,
Pall Life Sciences


Dr Hélène Pora is Vaccine Application Development director with Pall LIfe Sciences , where she has the worldwide responsibility for the development of improved separation and purification solutions for the vaccine and gene therapy market. She is also heavily involved in the development of improved single use technologies and related scale-up aspects. Hélène has more than 20 years of experience working for the pharmaceutical and the separation industries, the last 15 years with Pall Corporation. She holds an Engineering Degree in Biochemistry (with Molecular Biology) from the Institut National Agronomique (France) and a PhD in Biochemistry ( on protein engineering and purification) from the University of Orsay (France). Hélène Speaks regularly at conferences about improved separation technologies for the biotechnology and biopharmaceutical industry.

Dr Alain Pralong,
Head of PTBB-T,
F. Hoffman La Roche


Mr Thomas Smith,
Director, Downstream Process Development,
GlaxoSmithKline R&D


Tom Smith is currently the director of Downstream Process Development at GlaxoSmithKline. He is located in the United States and his group is responsible for developing, transferring, and validating purification processes for GSK’s biopharmaceutical pipeline. Tom has worked at GSK (and its earlier incarnations) since 1986, spending the last 15 years in process development. He is co-inventor on three patents related to protein purification, and has published papers on purification process validation. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Penn State University in 1981.

Mr Ache Stokelman,
Senior Process Development Engineer,
Amgen


Ache Stokelman received his B.S.in Mechanical Engineering in 1990 from The Technion, Haifa Israel. For over 15 years he has worked in Process Development at Amgen where he specializes in highly automated equipment for Biotechnology. He developed several generations of chromatography systems for pilot scale and production and developed filtration and mixing methods and systems are used worldwide throughout Amgen. During the past few years he has lead a technology development project to create a high-throughput, miniaturized-bioreactor based system for cell culture experimentation in support of process development.

Mr Wil van Haren,
Director, Large Scale Downstream Processing,
Diosynth Biotechnology


Dr Daniel Vellom,
Associate Director of Purification Development,
Acambis


Larry West,
Executive Vice President of Sales,
Finesse


Larry was most recently the V.P. of Business Development for the Broadley-James Corporation™. During his tenure at Broadley-James™ he was responsible for both their Sensor & System business. The Systems Group at Broadley-James™ was created in 2002 upon his introduction of the Life Science industries first digitally enabled Bioreactor Control System. Prior to joining Broadley-James™, Larry was responsible for OEM Sales at Honeywell International and held an array of positions affiliated with Emerson Process Management. He has spent 22 years in the Process Measurement & Control industry, is a former Board Member of the Regional ISA and is an active member of the ISPE.

Dr Michael Wolff,
Biotechnologist and Pharmacologist,
Max-Planck-Institute


Prof Florian Wurm,
Professor of Biotechnology,
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)


As a biologist and molecular geneticist, Florian (56) is recognized internationally as one of the leading animal cell technologists with both industrial and academic backgrounds (Hoechst AG Germany, Harvard University Boston, Genentech Inc. South San Francisco, Swiss Fed. Inst. Technology Lausanne, Switzerland, ExcellGene SA, Monthey Switzerland). He has been one of the pioneering scientists in establishing processes based on CHO cells and his research and development efforts have both pushed forward the productivity of such processes and have also contributed to a better understanding of the genetics, physiology and process constraints of recombinant cells in large scale manufacturing. His main scientific interest lies in the field of gene transfer to animal cells, where he has published the majority of his papers (>130).?Florian is President of the European Society for Cell Technology (ESACT) since 2005. Florian is founder and member of the board of the start-up company ExcellGene, Monthey, Switzerland. He holds the position of the Chief Scientific Officer of this company. He teaches Molecular and Cellular Biotechnology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland where he also leads a research group of around 20 young scientists and engineers.

Dr An-Ping Zeng,
Professor and Institute Head/Research Group Systems Biology,
Hamburg University of Technology/German Research Center for Biotechnology, Germany


Dr. A.-P. Zeng is professor and director of the Institute of Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering at the Hamburg University of Technology and also head of the research group Systems Biology at the German Research Centre for Biotechnology (GBF) in Braunschweig, Germany. His recent research encompasses systems biology and its application to biomedical questions and bioprocess development, with particular interest on integrated use of functional genomic tools, mathematical and engineering methods for the reconstruction and analysis of genome-scale metabolic and gene regulatory networks of cells.

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