Dr Anton McCaffrey | Senior Director of Emerging Science and Innovation
TriLink BioTechnologies

Dr. McCaffrey is the Senior Director of Emerging Science and Innovation at TriLink BioTechnologies and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa. Dr. McCaffrey has over 25 years’ experience designing nucleic acid based therapeutics for antisense, RNA interference, aptamer and genome editing applications. His research in this area began at an early antisense company called Genta in the late 80s. Later he studied in vivo ribozyme kinetics at the University of Colorado at Boulder with Dr. Olke Uhlenbeck. While a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in the laboratory of Dr. Mark Kay, Dr. McCaffrey conducted early in vivo proof of concept studies of RNA interference in mammals as well as studies on innate immunity. At UIOWA his research focused on genome editing with zinc-finger nucleases, self-amplifying RNA replicons, microRNAs and RNA interference targeting hepatitis viruses. Most recently, at TriLink BioTechnologies, he helped establish a program manufacturing GMP grade mRNAs for genome editing, gene replacement and vaccines. TriLink is the leading contract manufacturer of mRNAs, RNA single guide strands for the research and clinical/cGMP market as well as self-amplifying RNAs. His research interests include scalable mRNA manufacturing processes, rapid manufacturing of RNA based vaccines, chemical modification of mRNA to reduce innate immune stimulation, the biology of 5’ caps and development of specialized assays for mRNA characterization