Currently, Dr. Rick Kamps is working as a Laboratory Manager in the Department of Toxicogenomics and as a teacher supervising many Bachelor students in the concept of Problem Based Learning (PBL) in the Faculty of Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences since 2010. Furthermore, he has more than 25 years of research experience in the diagnostics and biotechnology sector (e.g., Academic Hospitals in Aachen (Germany) and Maastricht (the Netherlands), and Philips Research Eindhoven (the Netherlands). He is more than a decade skilled in Next-generation sequencing in multiple applications (e.g., RNA/DNA sequencing). At the end of 2020, he gained a Ph.D. in Resolving the Role of Genetic Defects and the Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number in Mitochondrial Disease and Embryonic Development.
Illip Burmester Technical and Applications Manager, Proteome Sciences, UK Illip Burmester is a Technical and Applications Manager at Proteome Sciences and has 20 years’ experience working in the biomarker sector in academia and industry. Since joining Proteome Sciences in 2019 he is involved in technical, scientific, and business development functions and has been working with customers focusing on the identification of optimally tailored solutions.
Dr. Jianming Xu received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Münster, Germany. He has extensive experience working with preclinical mouse models in the field of Immunology and Oncology. He joined GemPharmatech in 2021 as a principal scientist to design and generate humanized mouse models for the preclinical evaluation of novel therapeutics specifically targeting the tumor microenvironment. He is currently the Director of in vivo pharmacology at GemPharmatech. His team accomplishes more than 1,000 preclinical efficacy tests per year and has served internationally well-known Pharma and biotech all over the world.
Founder and CEO of Precision Biologics, board-certified medical oncologist, on clinical staff at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Walter Reed Medical Center, Co-Chair for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institutional Review Board (IRB). Prior to founding Precision Biologics in 2012, served at the National Cancer Institute, USA focused on the development of a programmatic approach to vaccine clinical trials conducted at the NCI as well as at numerous other leading cancer centers throughout the U.S.
Served on the Integration Panel for the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, Prostate Cancer Research Program from 2008 through 2018, serving as chair the committee in 2013. Authored or coauthored over 100 peer reviewed manuscripts in internationally known scientific and medical journals, including: Journal of Clinical Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy.
Philipp Wortmann, Ph.D., serves as the Director of Translational Science in Computational Pathology within the Early Oncology R&D division at AstraZeneca. He works at the interface of data science and oncology diagnostics, drawing upon his extensive background in computer vision and deep learning algorithm development. His primary focus is on discovering novel biomarker signatures that can be utilized for prospective patient testing in targeted tumor therapies, aiming to enhance the precision and effectiveness of cancer treatment.
Dr. Marine Blackman is a Research & Development Scientist at Celyad Oncology in Belgium, where she is involved in advancing the frontiers of CAR T-cell therapies. She has a diverse educational background holding degrees in Biomedical Sciences and Molecular Biology from the Université de Montréal, and a PhD degree in Biomedical & Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Université Catholique de Louvain. Dr. Blackman has gained extensive experience in the fields of cellular and molecular biology, immunology, cancer metabolism and metastasis. During her academic career, she has won multiple awards including the ISCaM award and EACR award. She joined Celyad Oncology in 2024 to develop innovative technologies and solutions to fight life-threatening diseases and improve patient outcomes.
Anamarija Pfeiffer, PhD is a Senior Scientific Project Manager at Biognosys. Anamarija is responsible for improvement and continued development of immunopeptidomics workflows and driving scientific collaborations with KOLs in the field. Her expertise is on proteomics applications in mechanism of action studies and novel target discovery within oncology and immuno-oncology. Anamarija obtained her BSc and MSc from the Department of Biology at the University of Zagreb, and her PhD from the University of Copenhagen. She worked as an analyst at Pfizer in Zagreb and an industrial postdoctoral researcher at Scandion Oncology in Copenhagen before joining Biognosys in 2022.
Dan Crowley is CEO of RemedyBio, a Dublin, Ireland biotech pioneering a mass-scale, live single cell discovery platform. RemedyBio enables the profiling of millions of live cells in parallel, recovering those cells of outsized impact to enable new therapies and targets in oncology and immune disease. Previously Mr. Crowley co-founded and led Genomics Medicine Ireland, a venture backed population genomics company, from foundation to acquisition, and served as Venture Partner with ARCH Venture Partners.
He previously served in a variety of investment and operational roles including as founding director of Venturelab, one of Europe’s first science focused accelerators. During his career he has had a direct role in the formation and financing of more than 20 companies including RemedyBio, GMI (acquired by Genuity Sciences), Carrick Therapeutics, Movidius (Intel), Silvercloud Health (Amwell), Clearsight, Artomatix (Unity), and others. He is a graduate of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the University of Dublin, Trinity College.
Bio-Engineer specialized in plant molecular and cellular biology. 36-year of experience as bio-entrepreneur and business and corporate development consultant in the biotech/pharma industry especially to SME’s. At Seqalis since mid-2021 as Chief Operating Officer to deploy the qTCR seq platform in the immune-oncology space.
Raj is a serial entrepreneur with passion for identifying, nurturing and launching spin-out companies with over 20 years track record of building lasting partnerships.
Raj currently serves as CEO and NED of Adendra Therapeutics, a company he co-Founded as Entrepreneur in Residence at Apple Tree Partners (ATP). Raj is also co-founder and serves on the board of Revitope Oncology and on SAB of Hawk Biosystems.
He joined ATP from GammaDelta Therapeutics – a company he co-founded, served as interim CEO, board member and latterly as Director of Business Development. At GammaDelta, Raj led the efforts to raise >$100M, establish innovative partnership with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, acquisition of Lymphact and spinning out of Adaptate Biotherapeutics. Takeda subsequently acquired both GammaDelta and Adaptate.
Prior to GammaDelta Therapeutics, Raj spent over 18 years at Cancer Research Technology (CRT) where he served in a variety of leadership roles. Whilst at CRT, Raj founded and served as interim CEO/NED of BliNK Therapeutics
Serial entrepreneur that combines strong strategic, technological and managerial experience with proven track record of deal-making and fund-raising. During his career he achieved together with his different teams to bring four drug candidates from research to the clinics (up to phase IIb). Overall, Eric has raised as of now a total of more than €170 million from VCs and strategic partners in Europe, USA, Japan and Korea and have had numerous successes in the sale and initial public offering of biotechnology companies. He is CEO of the biotechnology company PDC*line Pharma and board member of Essenscia (Bio.be). Eric is co-founder of four biotechnology companies called Myosix (bought by Genzyme mid-2002), Murigenetics, HairClone and Digital Orthopaedics. He is co-Inventor of the first GMP approved mobile manufacturing unit for cell therapy. Eric worked for 12 years in the Healthcare and Life Sciences Practice of Arthur D. Little. Eric holds two master’s degrees in pharmacology and Molecular Biology and a MBA from ESSEC business school (Paris, France), with an advanced degree from the Health Care ESSEC chair.
She is a PhD in Immunology from the University clinics in Essen with a focus of the role of specialized immune cells and their role in anti-viral responses in mouse model. She has been working at Abalos Therapeutics since the funding in 2019 and was first as a research scientist performing Mode of action studies of Abalos’ lead candidates in in vitro models in 2D and 3D cell culture. since Dezember 2023, she is present as Senior Principal Scientist responsible for project management of Abalos’ preclinical studies
Adriana has dedicated the past 15 years to developing innovative cancer immunotherapies. At iOmx, where she is Associate Director, she is responsible for the identification of antibody lead candidates for monoagent therapy of solid tumors. Her prior roles include Director of Target Bioanalytics at Immatics, where she was responsible for target bioanalytic for TCR-T and TCR-bispecific molecules, and Director of Technology and Innovation at Medigene Immunotherapies, where she advanced technologies in the field of TCR-T cell therapies. Adriana holds a PhD with a focus on Tumor Immunology from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (LMU) and has additional postdoctoral experience in Infection Biology and Autoimmunity at the University Clinic Erlangen, Germany, and at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. She is an inventor with several patents to her name and has contributed significantly to the scientific community with peer-reviewed journal publications in Immunology and cancer research.
Jens Kringelum has more than 15 years of experience within AI-immunology and vaccine development from industry and academic. In my years at academic and early industry he innovated several key projects focusing on T and B-cell epitope identification. Jens has been so fortunate to be pioneering the field of personalized cancer vaccine for treatment of cancer – directing the development of PIONEER, a bioinformatic AI platform for identification of neoepitopes and design of personalized cancer immunotherapies. By adopting PIONEER to a clinical workflow Jens has been involved in initiation of 2 first in man trials of neoepitope based treatments (NCT03715985, NCT04455503, NCT05309421 (ph2b)).
Holger Weber studied biology and obtained his Ph.D. at the Max-Planck Institute for Immunobiology in Freiburg, Germany. In 2001 he joined the research group of Prof. Augustin at the Tumor Biology Center, Freiburg. The scientific focus and interest during that time was the field of angiogenesis, first as a Post-Doc, later as a group leader. In 2007 he left basic research and started to work at ProQinase as a group leader in the Department of Cellular Drug Discovery. Since 2014, Holger Weber is Head of In Vivo Pharmacology responsible for the resorts Project Management and Internal Innovations at Reaction Biology.
Professor Tomasz Grabowski, DVM Ph.D., a specialist in bioanalysis, pharmacology, and pharmacokinetics (synthetic drugs and biologics). In 2000, after graduating with Ph.D. studies, he became a Senior Assistant in Herbapol’s Research and Development Laboratory in Wroclaw, From 2004 through 2011 he worked at Ravimed Sp. z.o.o, as a Head of the Pharmacokinetics Studies Center and Study Director. During his career in the pharmaceutical industry, he continued his scientific career by cooperating with a few Polish academic centers. Co-author of >120 scientific publications in prestigious journals the author of "Pharmacokinetics and Biopharmacy," a textbook and dozens of scientific reports. Was nominated as a professor by the President of the Republic of Poland in 2019. In the years 2011-2022, he joined Polpharma Biologics SA and worked as, Head of Preclinical Development. From 2022, Head of Preclinical Development in JJP Biologics and Professor in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Medical University of Gdańsk.
Dr. Angela Vasaturo is the Director of Scientific Affairs at Ultivue. Prior to Ultivue, Angela was a Senior Researcher in Dr. Jerome Galon’s Laboratory of Integrative Cancer Immunology at the Cordeliers Research Center. In 2012, Angela was among the first postdocs in Europe to be involved in the development of multiplex IHC and multispectral imaging and analysis of up to six immunofluorescence markers, and today is considered a leading European expert in multiplex IHC techniques, digital pathology, spatial biology and tissue imaging.
André is a dedicated Research Scientist at Secarna, specializing in immune oncology projects. As lead scientist on Secarna’s cutting-edge NRP1 program, he focuses his work on the in vitro and in vivocharacterization of NRP1-specific antisense oligonucleotides and their direct and indirect effects on the tumor microenvironment. With a robust background in immunology, he has extensive experience addressing the interactions of viral vectors, rare diseases, asthma, and cancer with the immune system. This broad expertise has equipped him with a comprehensive perspective and a versatile toolkit to address complex scientific questions within Secarna’s immune oncology projects. With this, he strives to advance novel therapeutic strategies in cancer treatment, which could significantly impact patient outcomes.
