FEATURED 2020 SPEAKERS

Dr. Hinrich Abken is Professor and Chair for Genetic Immunotherapy at the RCI, Regensburg Center for Interventional Immunology, University Regensburg where he is working towards the development of adoptive cell therapy of malignant diseases using engineered T cells. Dr. Abken studied medicine at...

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...

My research focuses on tumor immunology, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, and combination immunotherapy for solid tumors. Over the years, our research has yielded mechanistic data that has been translated to CAR T-cell and combination immunotherapy clinical trials for patients with...

Prof. Dr. Joachim Aerts is head of the department of Pulmonary Medicine of Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam. Ever since his PhD (1996), he has been involved in fundamental, translational and clinical research in immuno-oncology, with a strong focus on lung cancer and...

Dr. Stephen Badylak, DVM, PhD, MD is a Professor in the Department of Surgery, and Deputy Director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He has practiced both veterinary and human medicine and is now fully engaged in research. Dr. Badylak began his...

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...

I am a scientist by training and hold a PhD in Pharmacology. After my post-doc I got an MBA from HEC Paris. In the business development team of Fondazione Telethon I have been setting-up and following alliances aimed at developing advanced therapies stemming from the Telethon institutes and most...

David Blakey has a degree in Biochemistry from Oxford University, a PhD from London University and then worked as a Post Doc at the ICRF in London. In 1987 he joined AstraZeneca where he championed the company’s move into therapeutic antibodies. He was appointed Chief Scientist in Oncology in 2008...

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 Tissues, Cells and Advanced Therapeutics at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) in Edinburgh. He completed his PhD in Pathology at Edinburgh in 1995, and has worked in the cellular therapy field for 30 years in the...

Chemical Engineer, 1971, Univ. Porto; Master of Sciences (1975) and PhD in (1979) Environmental Engineering, Imperial College of Science and Technology, U. London; Habilitation in, Biochemical Engineering (1991), NOVA-Univ. Nova de Lisboa. Full Professor, Chemical and Biochemical...

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 partnership, innovation and development in the area of Orphan Drugs. Co-Founder of...

I am Biomedical Engineer from Politecnico of Milano (Italy). During my career I collaborated with the Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland (Australia) investigating the differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells in a microfluidic device. After my...

Prior to joining Tmunity, Dr. Coughlin was Chief Medical Officer at British biotechnology company, Immunocore Ltd., where she was responsible for leading the effort to develop novel bispecific T cell receptor-based biologics for cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Coughlin led the clinical efforts and...

Dr. Cruz is developing immune cell-based therapies for cancer and HIV. His work is focused on T cells and NK cells – experimentally tractable cells of the adaptive and innate immune response, respectively, that have been used in the clinics. His laboratory is focused on different ways of developing ...

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...

Eric Michael David is CEO of gene therapy at BridgeBio. He was a co-founder of Organovo, where he most recently served as Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President of Preclinical Development. Prior to Organovo, Dr. David was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Co, where he served...

Chirag Desai, MD is an abdominal organ transplant and hepatobiliary-pancreatic surgeon with special interest in the field of chronic pancreatitis and autologous islet cell transplantation.He was trained in General Surgery in India at the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, the largest tertiary ...

Joe Dupere was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Rexgenero in February 2015. Joe has more than 20 years of business development, M&A, operational and research management experience in the biopharmaceutical and investment banking sectors. Prior to Rexgenero, Joe was Head of Business...

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...

1991 – to date             BioPlanta GmbH President and CEO● Development and Manufacturing of stem cell products● Clinical Trial and Licensing of stem cell pharmaceuticals and tissue   engineered products 2017 – 2018             Bergmann AG Chief Business Development Officer; since 12/2017 Chief    ...

Dr. David Gilham is Vice-President R&D of Celyad. He heads the implementation of Research and Development strategy for the immune-oncology programs. Dr. Gilham received his Ph.D in Molecular Pharmacology at the University of Dundee prior to moving to Bristol University in 1996 to work on CAR T...

Cecilia Götherström is an Associate Professor in Stem Cell Research at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and her research is in the field of perinatal regenerative medicine. Dr Götherström has developed fetal mesenchymal stem cells for prenatal and postnatal transplantation purposes and since then...

Julian is a biotech entrepreneur and world expert in bioinformatics. He graduated his PhD in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge and was a research fellow at Stanford University. He is now a Programme Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and Professor of...

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...

Frank Hecht joined CellGenix in 2014. As Vice President of Marketing and Sales he is responsible for the management of the worldwide customer-facing activities and the strategic marketing positioning of the company.  Frank Hecht holds a Master’s Degree in Biology from the University of...

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...

Dr. Bjarki Johannesson is a Senior Research Investigator at The New York Stem Cell Foundation - Research Institute, where he leads the diabetes program. His work focuses on using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells to accelerate the understanding and treatment of...

Troels Jordansen started his career in healthcare with Leo Pharmaceutical Product and after 4 years with Johnson & Johnson Orthopaedics was one of the initial Genzyme Europe hires to focus on commercialising Carticel and Epicel in 1996. Over the last 20 years Troels has worked for 5 different...

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 ...

Cornelia Kasper studied Chemistry at the University Hannover and received her Diploma degree 1994. She performed her dissertation at the Institute for Technical Chemistry 1995-1998 and graduated as Dr. rer. nat.. Until 2000 she was employed as EU liason officer at the University of...

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...

Seokjoong Kim is an experienced molecular biologist in the field of programmable nuclease development and genome editing technology. Currently, Seokjoong is leading research and business development of ToolGen, Inc., Korean biotech focused on the translation of CRISPR/Cas9 technology into valuable...

Immunologist with focus on infectious diseases, rare diseases and cancer. I received my PhD in 2012 from the University of Hamburg (Germany) and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, MA. I have studied T cells in the context of...

Dr. Kochan has extensive scientific and management background in early and late clinical development programs in oncology, metabolic disease, cardiovascular, immunology, and inflammation. He has made important contributions in biomarker identification and development, and the application of...

Dr. Sebastian Kress is a postdoctoral scientist at the Institute of Cell and Tissue Culture Technologies at BOKU, Vienna, Austria. His research focuses on non-destructive online monitoring of metabolic parameters and the secretome of 3D cell cultures combining dynamic cultivation systems and...

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...

Steven Lee qualified with a BSc in Microbiology from the University of Bristol and went on to study for a PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine researching immune responses in leprosy patients. He then joined the Institute of Cancer Studies at the University of Birmingham where...

Within Novartis Oncology, Dr. Lennon served as General Manager, Japan overseeing Novartis’ extensive portfolio in cancer, including hematology, solid tumors and cell and gene therapies. Prior to his role in Japan, he served as VP, US Solid Tumors Franchise.Prior to Oncology, Dr. Lennon served in...

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...

Dawn Maier MSc, is the Sr. Director of Process Development and Manufacturing at ElevateBio and will be responsible for leading the process development and manufacturing teams. Dawn has over 17 years of research and GMP experience in multiple scientific disciplines. After receiving her Master of...

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 ...

Daniel O’Mahony is a Partner at Seroba Life Sciences and brings a wealth of experience in product development, strategic planning, licensing, corporate venturing, intellectual property management and commercialisation.Daniel was involved in corporate venture at Elan Corporation from 1996-2003. He...

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...

Currently the Head of Cancer Research UK GMP Biotherapeutics Development Unit. Leonard Pattenden's pharmaceutical experience is primarily in the development of a range of biomolecules such as therapeutic blood factors and monoclonal antibodies, but he also has a track record in viral vector and ...

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...

Roland Pochet, Ph.D., Honorary Professor of Cell Biology at the Faculty of Medicine of Université Libre de Bruxelles, is a neuroscientist who studies stem cell transplantation for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Pochet studied for two years in Israel under a European Molecular Biology Organization...

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...

David Schaffer is the Hubbard Howe Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Bioengineering, and Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as the Director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center. He received a B.S. from Stanford University in 1993 and a...

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 ...

Dr. Elizabeth Schwarzbach oversees collaborations and partnerships at The New York Stem Cell Foundation. Liz has an extensive background in industry and academia drug discovery and development. She began her career as a biologist in Merck Research Labs, received her PhD in Neuropharmacology from...

Ilya Shestopalov, PhD currently leads the cell analytics group within cellular process development at bluebird bio.  His research focuses on development of cell-based assays for hematopoietic stem/progenitor and CAR-T products.  Prior to bluebird bio, Dr. Shestopalov was a postdoctoral fellow in...

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...

Eric Soller, Ph.D., is BlueRock’s VP of corporate development and strategy. Dr. Soller led the launch of BlueRock as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Versant Ventures, a leading healthcare investment firm committed to helping exceptional entrepreneurs build the next generation of great healthcare...

Fatima Ann Sulaiman is the Head of Research and Services at Scleroderma and Raynaud’s UK (SRUK). SRUK is a patient focused organisation which funds research into scleroderma, a rare orphan auto immune condition. She is leading on the development and implementation of an innovative research strategy ...

Lawrence (Larry) C. Thompson, PhD. is a Senior Principal Scientist in Analytical Research and Development within BioTherapeutic Pharmaceutical Sciences at Pfizer.  He has been with Pfizer for 6+ years and is currently analytical lead on viral & plasmid based immunotherapeutics and gene...

Evelina Vågesjö, CEO, Co-founder, PhD in physiology. Developed methods to steer immune cell functions and delineated a new mechanism of action during in tissue regeneration. BSc in Management Accounting, MBA-studies focus Finance and MnA.

Bahram (Bob) Valamehr is the Chief Development Officer at Fate Therapeutics, overseeing the company’s early development activities including “off-the-shelf” cell therapy product candidates derived from the company’s induced pluripotent stem cell platform. Previously, Dr. Valamehr was the Vice...

Dr. van der Loo has been involved in the GMP manufacturing of viral vectors for early phase clinical trials since 2002. He received his PhD from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam in stem cell biology in 1995, completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Indiana University on a grant from the Howard...

Edward currently serves on the supervisory boards of Progentix Orthobiology, Cristal Therapeutics, Synaffix, Staten Biotechnology, Escalier BioSciences and Scenic Biotech. He served on the supervisory boards of BioCeros (sold in 2011), Noviogendix (acquired by MDxHealth) and was founding investor...

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. has focused his academic and business career on the application of developmental biology to age-related degenerative disease. He is founder and CEO of AgeX Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on the emerging field of interventional gerontology. He formerly served as ...

Adrian Woolfson, BM, BCh, PhD, has over a decade of biopharmaceutical industry experience in drug discovery, medical affairs and early and late stage clinical development. Most recently, he served as Chief Medical Officer at Nouscom AG, a genetic cancer vaccine biotechnology company based in...

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...