FEATURED 2020 SPEAKERS

Dr. Elsa Abranches joined the UK Stem Cell Bank team in December 2015 as a Senior Stem Cell Biologist. In January 2019, Dr. Elsa was appointed Group Leader of the Section of Stem Cell Biology and Director of the UK Stem Cell Bank. Her primary focus is developing and delivering a programme of...

Axel Boehnke is Director Market Access. He´s fully responsible all market access aspects, patient access as well early evidence planning as well as actions to accelerate access to patients, currently with the focus on orphan diseases and gene therapy. His experience in this area of work has allowed ...

I am a pediatric hematologic oncologist and Chief of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies Service. I specialize in bone marrow and cord blood transplantation to treat blood diseases in children and young adults. I have particular expertise in treating rare diseases, such...

A Doctor in Pharmacy, who holds a degree in Health law. He enjoyed a long career in the field of Regulatory Affairs.He began his career as a consultant with International Drug Development (IDD), but soon joined the company SYNTHELABO in its Research and Development center where he worked for nine...

Professor John Campbell is Associate Director of Research and Development at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) in Edinburgh. He completed his PhD in Pathology at Edinburgh in 1995 on the immunopathogenesis of lymproliferative disease, and has worked in the cellular therapy...

Jean-Philippe has 28 years of experience in the pharma & biotech industries. He is a highly skilled senior executive with a broad range of experience leading global development and a successful track record of innovation and development in the area of Orphan Drugs. While Chief Operating Officer ...

Fund manager at Abante Biotech Fund. MD with more than 10 years of experience in the life-sciences industry. Experience in conducting laboratory and clinical research at institutions such as Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. Member of...

Davide Danovi holds an MD from University of Milan and a PhD in Molecular Oncology from the European Institute of Oncology where he demonstrated the causative role of the HdmX protein in human cancer. He completed his postdoctoral training working with Prof. Austin Smith and Dr. Steve Pollard at...

Victoria English, the editor, is a former financial journalist for Dow Jones and Reuters having worked in New York, Amsterdam, Brussels and London. In 1997 she began writing about healthcare at Reuters, and later joined Scrip to cover the pharmaceutical industry. From Scrip, she became editor of...

Farzin Farzaneh, Professor of Molecular Medicine, Kings College London Having studied at universities of Aberdeen and Sussex, followed by a number of fellowships by Beit, EMBO and MRC, in UK and Holland, I Joined King's College London in 1985. I was appointed the founding head of the Department ...

Michela Gabaldo is Head, Alliance Management & Regulatory Affairs at Fondazione Telethon in Milan, Italywhere she joined in 2011.As Head of Alliance Managment she was responsible for the execution of the first strategic Alliance ofTelethon/OSR with GSK managing gene therapy projects at...

Lise Marie Grav is a postdoctoral researcher at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark. She graduated with a Ph.D. in biotechnology in early 2018 from the same university and has worked in the field of CHO cell line engineering and...

Uta Griesenbach is a Professor in Molecular Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London and the President of the British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy (www.bsgct.org/). Uta‘s reserach interests are related to the development of gene therapy-based treatments for...

Hansjörg Hauser’s expertise is molecular biology. He is studying events in transcription activation and signal transduction that mediate consequences of infections. With this work he tries to connect molecular events of innate immune reactions with complex phenotypes in the organism. He is also...

Christoph Herwig, bioprocess engineer from RWTH Aachen, worked in industry in the design and commissioning of large chemical facilities prior to enter his interdisciplinary PhD studies at EPFL, Switzerland in bioprocess identification. Subsequently he positioned himself at the interface between...

Edward Hodgkin is a Partner of Syncona Partners LLP and a Non-Executive Director of Autolus Ltd, where he served as CEO from the company’s inception in September 2014 until March 2016. Autolus is developing a series of next-generation engineered T-cell products for treatment of haematological and...

Vaidehi Joshi is a Scientist in the Therapeutics team at Organovo Inc. She has a decade of research experience in academia and industry. She completed her undergraduate degree in Biotechnology from India. She further received a M.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering with specialization in...

Steve is the Chief Scientific Officer of Caribou Biosciences responsible for R&D activities related to therapeutic discovery and development.  Before joining Caribou, Steve served in positons of increasing responsibility in both oncology and immunology/inflammation drug discovery at...

Bo Kara heads up the Process Development team for Advanced Therapy Delivery at GSK. He has over 25 years’ experience in designing research and development programmes to develop scaleable and validatable manufacturing processes for recombinant protein products. He has published widely and is primary ...

Since October 2011 Cornelia Kasper has been appointed Full University Professor “Biopharmaceutical Technology and Products” at the Department of Biotechnology at Boku. Between 2000-2001 Cornelia Kasper was the head of Cell Culture and Tissue Engineering Group at the Institute for Technical...

Dr. Keirstead is an internationally known stem cell expert and has led therapy development for late stage cancers, immune disorders, motor neuron diseases, spinal cord injury and retinal diseases. He is the CEO of AIVITA Biomedical. He was previously CSO of Caladrius which acquired California Stem...

Dmitry is the founder and managing partner of 4BIO Capital Partners, a venture capital firm focused on advanced therapies. He trained as a neuroscientist. Before co-founding the firm, Dmitry spent many years doing academic research on optogenetics and gene therapy for CNS disease in Germany and the ...

Dr. Lamb is scientific co-founder, Executive Vice President, and Chief Scientific Officer of Incysus Therapeutics.  As a transplant immunologist with 27 years’ experience in clinical-translational immunotherapy research, he is responsible for first describing the association between relapse-free...

Mr. Lebovits joined Brainstorm in July 2007 as President and has been involved with its activities from early pre-clinical stage to the current Phase IIb clinical trials in the United States, and has taken a monumental part in its huge growth and development.Since September 2015, Mr. Lebovits also...

Frank Luyten is full professor in the Biomedical Sciences at the KU Leuven, BE and Chairman of the division of rheumatology at the University Hospitals Leuven; Director of the Skeletal Biology and Engineering Research Center, KU Leuven; Director of Prometheus, Division of Skeletal Tissue...

Danilo Maddalo graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from Naples University (Italy) and thereafter moved to Germany to carry his PhD at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in molecular oncology. He moved on to Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York City, USA) to perform his Postdoctoral studies...

Dr John Maher is a clinical immunologist and immunopathologist who leads the "CAR Mechanics" research group within King's College London. His research group is focused on the development of adoptive immunotherapy using CAR engineered and gamma delta T-cells. He is also chief...

Athanasios (Sakis) Mantalaris is Professor in the W.H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech & Emory since August 2018. Prior to his move to Atlanta, he was Professor of BioSystems Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. He...

David J. Mazzo, PhD, was appointed as Caladrius' Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our Board of Directors on January 5, 2015. In addition, Dr. Mazzo was appointed as President of the Company in March 2017. Dr. Mazzo brings to the Company over 35 years of international experience in the ...

Jennifer Moody is a cell therapy, business operations professional with 23 years of experience with stem cells, 12 of those years in industry commercializing products spanning from stem cell reagents to cell-based therapeutics. She obtained a BSc in Genetics from York University (Toronto), a PhD in ...

David Morrow is Programme Manager Translational Medicine & Drug Development at EATRIS.David received a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Biology from University College Dublin in 2001 and a PhD in Vascular Biology from Dublin City University in 2006. This was followed by an American Heart Association...

Alexander Natz is the Secretary General of the European Confederation of Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurs (www.eucope.org) in Brussels and advises innovative pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including start-ups, in regulatory and pricing & reimbursement matters from the EU law and German law...

Jelena Ochs was awarded her degree in bio-engineering, majoring in »Bioprocess Engineering from the University of Stuttgart. In January 2016, she took up a position as a research associate in the IPT Production Technology group. After only one month, she was appointed Manager of the »Life Sciences ...

Dominic O’Regan, through his company New Mosaic Ltd, works to help seed stage companies in the UK and Europe obtain investment and to commercialise towards exit or market.  This work is typically very collaborative, with close working relationships with the companies and others in his network to...

Palani Palaniappan, Ph.D., has more than 25 years of pharmaceutical experience and continues to contribute to commercial registration and clinical development of numerous candidates in small molecule, biologics, ADCs and cell therapy. He serves as the head of Technical Operations at Sarepta...

Ioannis is an ATMP Bioprocess Research Coordinator at Prometheus, KU Leuven, Belgium. He has graduated in Chemical Engineering, from the University of Patras, Greece and obtained a Doctoral degree (MPhil and PhD) from the Department of Biochemical Engineering, University College London (UCL), UK -...

Since January 2017 Dr. Detlev Parow is Head of the Department of Medicines, Therapeutic Appliances and Remedies at DAK-Gesundheit in Hamburg. From 2010 to 2016 he was responsible for Care Management Development at DAK-G. From 2002 to 2009, he worked for Hamburg Münchener, initially leading the...

C. David Pauza, PhD is Chief Science Officer for American Gene Technologies and former Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore. Prior to joining AGT, Dr. Pauza was Associate Director for the university’s prestigious Institute of Human Virology and Co-Leader...

Dr Qasim Rafiq is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Cell & Gene Therapy Bioprocessing within the Department of Biochemical Engineering at University College London (UCL). Prior to this he was a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Bioprocess Engineering at Aston Medical Research...

Lior Raviv joined Pluristem in 2011 and currently serves as Vice President of Development in charge on process & technology development and manufacturing sciences. Prior to that Mr. Raviv served as Projects manager & Product development Team leader at Pluristem in charge of new technologies ...

Al Ribickas is the BMT/QC Laboratories Manager in the Cell Therapies Facility at the Moffitt Cancer in Tampa Florida.  Al has provided leadership for cellular therapy facilities for over eighteen years. He attended the University of South Florida receiving a degree in Clinical Laboratory...

I am responsible for the development and application of technologies in the area of precise genome engineering, human stem cell based disease models and transgenics in Discovery Sciences at Astrazeneca and the facilitating the exploitation of these technologies by our iMED disease focus areas for...

Dominic is a Partner of Syncona. Prior to joining Syncona, he worked in the life sciences team of strategy consultancy L.E.K. Consulting. Dominic received his PhD from the Department of Oncology at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Cancer Research UK scholar. He also holds a German Diplom ...

Devyn joined Sigilon Therapeutics in early 2017 as Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Operations. In this role, he has led the development of the corporate strategy, portfolio strategy and other key strategy elements.  In addition, he is accountable for project management, intellectual...

Alan Smith, is currently the Executive Vice President Technical Operations at Bellicum Pharmaceuticals. He has broad experience in the cell therapy area with over 30 years working in various senior management roles in research and development, manufacturing and quality in cell and gene therapy...

Bahram (Bob) Valamehr is the Vice President of Cancer Immunotherapy at Fate Therapeutics, overseeing the company’s immuno-oncology and pluripotent stem cell programs, including efforts to develop novel pluripotent cell strategies to create “off-the-shelf” cell-based cancer...

Dr Alain Vertès is a Sloan Fellow from London Business School and a microbiologist by training (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Institut Pasteur Paris, and University of Lille Flandres-Artois). He is a strategy and business development consultant for several companies, including big...

Michael D. West, Ph.D. is co-CEO of BioTime, Inc. (NYSE American: BTX), a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on degenerative diseases, having served as CEO from 2007 to 2015. He is also CEO of BioTime subsidiary AgeX Therapeutics, focused on the emerging field of interventional...

Dr. Masahide Yano is a research scientist in Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER)at US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Dr. Yano completed his doctoral training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, New York  where he received his Ph.D. degree on Microbiology and...

Stefano has been working in  clinical research  for more than 20 years, mainly in GSK but also in Novartis and Aptuit, managing a portfolio of clinical projects and  leading a group of scientists accountable for the end to end operational management of the assigned clinical studies from concept...