John M Rossi is Vice President of Translational Medicine at Syncopation Life Sciences. John is an experienced Cell Therapy and Biotechnology leader with over 22 years of experience building robust clinical pharmacology, predictive biomarker, and correlative science processes to support oncology drug development. Most recently John was Senior Vice President of Research and Head of Translational Medicine at CERo Therapeutics. At CERo, John helped to guide Research, Process Development and Vector Sciences teams to advance preclinical initiatives. Prior to CERo, John was Senior Director and Head of Clinical Pharmacology at Kite, a Gilead Company. At Kite, John played an instrumental role in supporting global approvals of both Yescarta® and Tecartus® as well as IND approvals to advance investigational autologous T cell therapy products (KITE-363 and KITE-222). Among John’s notable achievements at Kite, he has represented the organization through numerous external scientific presentations and collaborative manuscripts with leading academic researchers in the cell therapy field. Significant scientific accomplishments include the discovery of novel metrics to characterize CAR T cells based on functionality and fitness, novel biomarker knowledge helping to elucidate CAR T-cell mechanism of action in humans, mechanistic information on CAR-related toxicities, novel insights into the biology of the tumor immune microenvironment, and the pivotal role of IL-15 in the context of CAR T-cell function. John began his tenure in clinical pharmacology and biomarker development at Amgen in 2002, leading global biomarker development for Phase III registrational trials in oncology (trebananib, AMG386), and preclinical, first-in-human and Phase II clinical trials (AMG780, AMG224 and AMG176). John has co-authored over 35 publications in the field of cell therapy and is co-inventor on 9 issued or submitted patents. John earned his Master of Science degree in Molecular Biology at Portland State University and his B.S. degree in Biology at Pitzer College in Claremont CA.
John M Rossi is Vice President of Translational Medicine at Syncopation Life Sciences. John is an experienced Cell Therapy and Biotechnology leader with over 22 years of experience building robust clinical pharmacology, predictive biomarker, and correlative science processes to support oncology drug development. Most recently John was Senior Vice President of Research and Head of Translational Medicine at CERo Therapeutics. At CERo, John helped to guide Research, Process Development and Vector Sciences teams to advance preclinical initiatives. Prior to CERo, John was Senior Director and Head of Clinical Pharmacology at Kite, a Gilead Company. At Kite, John played an instrumental role in supporting global approvals of both Yescarta® and Tecartus® as well as IND approvals to advance investigational autologous T cell therapy products (KITE-363 and KITE-222). Among John’s notable achievements at Kite, he has represented the organization through numerous external scientific presentations and collaborative manuscripts with leading academic researchers in the cell therapy field. Significant scientific accomplishments include the discovery of novel metrics to characterize CAR T cells based on functionality and fitness, novel biomarker knowledge helping to elucidate CAR T-cell mechanism of action in humans, mechanistic information on CAR-related toxicities, novel insights into the biology of the tumor immune microenvironment, and the pivotal role of IL-15 in the context of CAR T-cell function. John began his tenure in clinical pharmacology and biomarker development at Amgen in 2002, leading global biomarker development for Phase III registrational trials in oncology (trebananib, AMG386), and preclinical, first-in-human and Phase II clinical trials (AMG780, AMG224 and AMG176). John has co-authored over 35 publications in the field of cell therapy and is co-inventor on 9 issued or submitted patents. John earned his Master of Science degree in Molecular Biology at Portland State University and his B.S. degree in Biology at Pitzer College in Claremont CA.
Jessica McDonough is a co-founder and VP at Attivare Tx, a new immunotherapy company developing technology from the Wyss Institute at Harvard. Jessica joined Attivare Tx in July of 2021 to develop innovative immunotherapies. Prior to joining Attivare, Jessica was a Business Development Lead at the Wyss Institute at Harvard from 2014-2021. Jessica was responsible for translating technologies in the areas of synthetic biology and molecular robotics. She also managed a venture capital alliance with Northpond Ventures. Prior to joining Wyss, Jessica worked at Decision Resources (now Clarivate) as a Principal in their custom consulting division. She worked with top pharmaceutical and biotech companies on over fifty engagements including topics such as therapeutic area landscapes, opportunity assessments, and valuations focusing on both the major and emerging markets. Jessica holds a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Cellular and Molecular Medicine. While at Hopkins, her research focused on prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and development of assays for sensitive detection of drug-resistant HIV variants. Jessica also holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Dr. Yisrael Katz is an industry physician with translational research experience spanning across immunology, oncology, and neuroscience. He is board certified in internal medicine and has most recently practiced inpatient medicine at the University of California, San Diego, where his responsibilities included acute care coverage of bone marrow transplant and CAR-T patients. Dr. Katz has served as medical lead in designing first-in-human studies of a novel diagnostic-therapeutic cancer vaccine platform at CALVIRI. As medical director at Exelixis, Dr. Katz was involved with multiple late phase programs in solid tumors, including immunotherapy combination trials. He currently serves as senior medical director at Viracta Therapeutics, a clinical-stage precision oncology company developing treatments for virally-associated malignancies. Dr. Katz has founded two medical education companies and is a nationally recognized expert in diagnostic reasoning, having delivered lectures to over 5,000 medical students and junior physicians across numerous US programs.
Dr. Barron obtained her BS in Biochemistry/Cell Biology at UC San Diego where her emphasis was cancer and immunology. She received a PhD in Cell Biology, Stem Cells, and Development from the UC Denver where she elucidated a gene transcriptional pathway in lower jaw development. As a postdoc at Stanford, Dr. Barron used iPSC-induced cardiomyocytes as a drug toxicity model for novel anti-arrhythmics. Returning to San Diego, she was a Regulatory Affairs consultant, until she joined Cardea Bio in 2015. Cardea Bio is the first semiconductor company to produce Biosignal Processing Units (BPUs) providing a Gateway to Biology by translating real-time streams of multi-omics signals to digital information. As VP R&D and Regulatory Affairs, Dr. Barron launched the first drug discovery research tool utilizing mass-produced BPUs. In 2019, Dr. Barron became VP Innovation Partnerships; building commercial and academic partnerships to bring Powered by Cardea products from ideation to launch.
Paul joined RAPT Therapeutics in 2016, bringing years of experience building and leading high-performance technical groups in various biopharmaceutical organizations. At RAPT, Paul oversees the teams building and executing assays to guide the chemistry team in developing structure-activity relationships. Additionally, Paul leads the team developing biomarker plans and assays and executing computational analyses to support clinical programs. Paul was Director of Research and Head of the Genome Analysis Unit at Amgen, Inc. During his eleven years at Amgen, he developed and implemented multiple high-throughput platforms for drug discovery and target identification across a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas. Prior to Amgen, Paul held scientific and leadership positions in several smaller companies, which enabled him to exercise his passion for creating novel technology platforms to enable drug discovery. Paul received his B.S. in Genetics and Development from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana before performing graduate research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and earning his Ph.D. in Immunology from Harvard University. He also completed postdoctoral work in Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Mahajan is a Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca in the Bioanalysis group. She is a Molecular Biologist and her current focus is on new drug modality areas including mRNA-LNP, Antisense Oligonucleotides (ASO) and Cell therapy (CAR-T). She has been the lead scientist for the strategy design and development of a number of assays in new drug modality. She has developed droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) and qPCR based assays for CAR-T programs. Prior to joining AstraZeneca she worked at Genentech in the oncology biomarker development group and contributed to the strategy design and development of assays for both small and large molecules. She has also worked on liquid biopsy and extracellular vesicles. Dr. Mahajan received her PhD from International Center for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi and did her postdoctoral studies at UCSF. During her PhD studies she was the recipient of a fellowship from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Govt. of India. She also received “Dr D.L. Shrivastava Memorial Young Scientist Award” organized by the Society of Biological Chemists (India) during her PhD studies. Her career interests include molecular biology, immuno-oncology and biomarker development. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA with her family and has a flair for poetry, classical dance and badminton.
Dr. Philip Measor is an Assistant Professor in the department of Engineering and Physics at Whitworth University. He founded the Microdevices Lab at Whitworth to investigate novel ways to make and apply devices with microscale elements to various fields. Before academia, Dr. Measor worked as a research scientist and applications development engineer at KLA Corp., the leader in process control systems for the semiconductor industry. Prior to KLA, he founded a biotechnology company, LiquiLume Diagnostics Inc., to develop point-of-care optofluidic devices for virus detection and skin cancer companion diagnostics and was supported by the NIH and NSF. Dr. Measor holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Cruz specializing in applied optics. He has more than seven patents and greater than 40 publications in biosensing or other applied optics.
Andrea Giuliani, Ph.D., MBA, is currently Business Development Director for the Oncology and Precision Diagnostics franchise at QIAGEN. Before joining QIAGEN in 2021, Andrea has been covering several roles in multiple diagnostic companies, contributing to the development and launch of molecular assays and sample-to-result solutions to serve both central laboratories and point of care settings. Andrea holds a Doctorate from the University of Siena.
Joe Gogain is an Associate Director of Clinical Research and Development at SomaLogic, Inc., where he works closely with collaborating partners developing diagnostic and prognostic proteomic applications. Joe is a biological scientist with molecular diagnostic and immunoassay development expertise. Joe has a proven track record of IVD product development under design control and experience in de novo 510(k) regulatory submission processes and requirements. Additionally, Joe has served as a director of national clinical trials for point-of-care diagnostic devices and has experience managing a variety of technicians, scientists and clinical operations personnel.
Jayne is a Prince2 certified Project Manager at Randox Biosciences, with an educational background in Chemistry/Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Personalised Medicine. Jayne’s focus is working with Pharma and Biotech’s seeking to implement biomarker testing into their drug development process, with a specific interest in CDx development opportunities.
Dr. Buer Song is a practicing pathologist board-certified in Anatomic and Clinical pathology as well as Clinical Informatics. He also holds a PhD degree in Molecular and Cellular pathology. Over the last 20 years, Dr. Song has trained in both basic science and clinical diagnostics in institutions such as UAB, UCLA, University at Buffalo, and University of Pennsylvania, focusing on cancer research and diagnosis, biomarker discovery and validation, using different technologies such as IHC, IF, ISH, High Resolution Imaging, Liquid Biopsy, Digital Pathology, Histology, Genomics, Image Analysis, and AI enabled quantitative data analysis. He also has extensive experience in the CRO industry leading company strategy, laboratory operation, as well as R&D processes. Currently, Dr. Song is leading the iCura Diagnostics’ CLIA lab focusing on providing advanced diagnostic tests (including CTC, multiplex IHC/IF, Digital Pathology, etc.) and biomarker discovery and validation services, in both the clinical trial and diagnostics spaces.
Ronald Vos has a 30 year long background in sales management, product management, business development and distribution management within the Molecular Diagnostics and Clinical Genomics market. He previously held international positions at Luminex, Millipore, Thermo-Fisher and Mycartis prior to joining SensID. At SensID he is responsible for business development, focusing on Pharma, CRO’s and IVD Manufacturers.
Dr. Scott Lippman is recognized for elucidating tumor genomic and immune drivers and leading investigator-initiated trials. His group first identified, modeled and prospectively validated human oral precancer genomic risk, notably centered on recurrent somatic loss of heterozygosity events; launched the Pre-Cancer Genome Atlas (PCGA), an epic-scale study of precancer biology; and reported Erlotinib Prevention of Oral Cancer (EPOC), the first trial in this space using a precision-medicine design. He led an extensive series of clinical, experimental and computational studies that first identified the 9p21.3 genomic trigger of an immune-hot-to-cold microenvironment ‘switch’ in HPV— head and neck cancer. This 2021 report has had a major impact on the science and practice of immune-oncology and precision immunotherapy, addressing a key unanswered question in cancer biology—how a tumor escapes the immune system—evolving from immune-hot to cold, ultimately identifying a new immune-checkpoint therapy-resistance mechanism and developing a novel therapeutic platform (‘immunogenetic silencing’).
Joely has +25 years' cancer research experience at both the Christie Hospital and University of Manchester. She has worked on closed aseptic T-cell transfection/expansion systems which form the basis of CAR-T cell therapies and has 15-years’ experience in developing, validating, and delivering hypoxia-associated biomarkers. She is a technical expert in clinical biomarker platform discovery, spearheading commercialisation of ManTRa's approach to deliver a genomic test for precision cancer treatments and improved patient outcomes. Joely is also involved in a steering group (Biomedical research Engagement Academic clinical healthcare – BREACH) to encourage academic/industrial engagement, helping to drive academic science across the translational gap for cancer patient benefit.
A PhD Pharmacist by Education, Claire graduated in Paris, France and have since worked in the field of Biomarkers, starting with Lab testing experience in the largest French speciality Lab for 15 years. With the next 15 years spent in large CROs in senior Scientific positions, Claire acquired a solid background in assay validation, Laboratory management and Clinical trial requirements in terms of novel analytical technologies, GCLP compliance and Global Harmonization of lab networks. Claire then joined Randox Biosciences 6 years ago to help develop a new set of activities, dedicated to supporting the specific needs of Biotech & Pharma companies in relation to Lab testing and Biomarker assay developments, from exploratory stage through to Companion Diagnostics.
Dr. Georgantas is the Chief Scientific Officer at Biodesix. He has led research and translational science efforts at Biodesix since August 2019. Prior to joining Biodesix, Dr. Georgantas worked at AbbVie where he served as Director of Immunology Programs and Biomarkers within the Genomics Research Center of Excellence, a group of experts tasked with applying genetics, genomics, epigenetics, and metagenomics to inform the product pipeline primarily regarding new target discovery, biomarkers for clinical trials, and asset positioning. He also spent six years in Translational Science at MedImmune/AstraZeneca which he joined after having been a faculty member in the Department of Oncology at the The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Georgantas is recognized as a leader of immunology translational science and strategy. Dr. Georgantas completed his Ph.D. in pharmacology and molecular medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Chetan Deshpande is a Director, Biomarker Clinical Assay Lead in Global Product Development at Pfizer. He is responsible for biomarker oversight across the Pfizer Oncology portfolio. He is a key member of various leadership teams within Pfizer to support operational improvement initiatives including adoption of digital technology in clinical trials. Prior to joining Pfizer, Chetan spent over 15 years in academic and pharmaceutical industry including Amgen and Stanford Medical Center. Chetan received M.S. in Immunology at University of Tennessee, Memphis, M.Sc. in Microbiology from University of Pune, India, and an MBA in Finance and Global Business from Pepperdine University Business School.
Dr. Bornheimer is Associate Director of Medical & Scientific Affairs at BD Biosciences, where he works on the development of new technologies and applications for single cell research, flow cytometry, patient diagnostics, and cell therapy. A major focus is on biomarker and CDx development programs with BioPharma, CROs, and academic medical centers, primarily in oncology and infectious diseases. Previously, he led the R&D effort to develop and commercialize an extremely easy-to-use IVD cytometry system for CD4, %CD4, and Hb measurements for HIV/AIDS patients in resource limited settings (BD FACSPresto). He also led scientific efforts for a COVID-19 diagnostic based on immune cell subsets, co-leads a novel TB diagnostic program, and had leadership roles in developing cell enrichment and isolation technologies based on acoustics, magnetics, and fluorescence-activated cell sorting. He joined BD to apply science and technology to directly impact patient lives, entering through the Technology Leadership Development Program. Dr. Bornheimer received a Ph.D. from UC San Diego in Chemistry and Biochemistry, under joint mentorship in the departments of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Bioengineering, where he investigated heterotrimeric G-protein signaling through computational modeling, development of new biosensors, and live cell fluorescent imaging approaches.
