Dr. Thomas Joos joined 1998 the NMI at the University of Tuebingen heading the department of biochemistry. Since 2013 he is the deputy managing director of NMI. His research is focused on miniaturized multiplexed immunoassays for biomarker research and diagnostic applications. Dr. Joos studied Biochemistry at the University of Tubingen. He performed his Ph.D. degree in 1995 on integrin‐alpha5 during early embroygenesis of Xenopus laevis in the laboratory of Prof. Peter Hausen at the Max‐Planck‐Institute of Developmental Biology. Dr. Joos is a member of the editorial board of Drug Discovery Today, Proteomics, Molecular Biotechnology and Expert Review of Proteomics. He is a member of the scientific advisory board of the "Plasma Proteome Institute" Washington, DC, USA, and of Myriad‐RBM, Austin, TX, USA. Dr. Joos is co-founder of SIGNATOPE, Reutlingen, Germany, a protein biomarker company offering assay development and screening services for any protein in any species.
Shailendra Singh (Shelly) is a member of MarketsandMarket's board. He focuses on global sales and client services functions, as well as commercial optimization at MarketsandMarkets. He has years of expe¬rience in global delivery and outsourcing sector in the IT/ Consulting/Analytics/Big Data sectors. Prior to MnM, he was leading the global sales, client services and commercial ef¬fectiveness functions for Mu Sigma, a unicorn company and a leading global provider of Decision Sciences and Big Data analytics solutions.
Ian Pike is the Chief Scientific Officer at Proteome Sciences and has over 30 years’ experience working in the diagnostics and biotechnology sectors. Since joining Proteome Sciences in 2002 he has held a number of roles covering intellectual property management, business development, operational management and is now focused on leading the Company’s scientific strategy to offer clients a flexible, high-quality service.
Dr. Thomas Joos joined 1998 the NMI at the University of Tuebingen heading the department of biochemistry. Since 2013 he is the deputy managing director of NMI. His research is focused on miniaturized multiplexed immunoassays for biomarker research and diagnostic applications. Dr. Joos studied Biochemistry at the University of Tubingen. He performed his Ph.D. degree in 1995 on integrin‐alpha5 during early embroygenesis of Xenopus laevis in the laboratory of Prof. Peter Hausen at the Max‐Planck‐Institute of Developmental Biology. Dr. Joos is a member of the editorial board of Drug Discovery Today, Proteomics, Molecular Biotechnology and Expert Review of Proteomics. He is a member of the scientific advisory board of the "Plasma Proteome Institute" Washington, DC, USA, and of Myriad‐RBM, Austin, TX, USA. Dr. Joos is co-founder of SIGNATOPE, Reutlingen, Germany, a protein biomarker company offering assay development and screening services for any protein in any species.
Dr. Sikkema is currently Vice President, Accelerator and Pharma services for Quanterix Corporation.
Dan brings 25 years’ experience in the biopharmaceutical, vaccine and cell/gene therapy fields supporting oncology, neurosciences, respiratory, immunology and infectious disease. He has held positions of increasing responsibility at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Wyeth, Merck, Sanofi Pasteur, Frontage Laboratories and GlaxoSmithKline. In his career, he has contributed to the licensure of Prev(e)nar, Meningitec, Gardasil, RotaTeq, ProQuad, Zostavax, and Dengue vaccines, also Ofatumumab, Raxibacumab, Benlysta, Albiglutide, Mepolizumab, Denosumab, and other biopharmaceuticals, as well as Strimvelis (the world’s first ex vivo cell/gene therapy product). He has also worked with the World Health Organization, National Institute for Biological Standards and Controls (NIBSC), US Centers for Disease Control, FDA and EMA in roles as an invited expert and as an advisor. Dr. Sikkema earned his PhD in Microbiology and Public Health from Michigan State University, College of Medicine. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Infectious Diseases at SUNY at Buffalo, School of Medicine. He has Chaired Division V (Clinical and Diagnostic Immunology) for American Society for Microbiology and was Coordinator for an Innovative Medicine Initiative project ABIRISK, the largest funded project to study Immunogenicity of Biotherapeutics. He has authored 30 peer-reviewed publications and has delivered more than 80 public presentations globally at scientific symposia.
Peter Parker trained in Biochemistry (BA) at Oxford and then as a post-graduate under Professor Sir Philip Randle in Clinical Biochemistry (D.Phil) at Oxford. He won an MRC Fellowship to work with Professor Sir Philip Cohen and then worked in oncology with Professor Mike Waterfield, subsequently moving as a founder member to the Ludwig Institute at UCL. In 1990 he was appointed at the ICRF which become the London Research Institute (LRI) and then moved into the newly founded Francis Crick Institute in 2015 as a Senior Group Leader. Peter has held a joint appointment with King’s College London since 2006 where he is currently Director of the CRUK KHP Centre. Peter Parker has published over 350 primary articles in the area of signal transduction. Through the founding of companies (PIramed, Symansis, FASTBASE Solutions) he has also pursued translational interests in the areas of cancer drug development and biomarkers.
Dr. Richardus Vonk is head of Oncology Statistics and Data Management at Bayer AG. He is located in Berlin, Germany, and has over 30 years of experience in research and pharmaceutical development. Richardus regularly speaks about the role of statistics in a changing pharmaceutical environment. His current scientific interest is in statistical method development for early pharmaceutical research, biomarker development, and the transition between different phases of research and clinical development, all with a clear focus on quantitative decision making. Richardus has an MSc in Mathematics from the University of Nijmegen, and obtained his PhD at the Free University Berlin.
Professor Yong-Jie Lu is a professor in Molecular Oncology at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London. His past work has been mainly focused on identification of genetic alterations and genetic mechanisms in cancer development, progression and therapeutic response. Recently, his research work moved into circulating biomarker development, aiming to translate them into cancer diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic stratification. He published more than 100 peer reviewed original studies, in journals including Lancet, PNAS, Nature Genetics, Journal Clinical Oncology, Cancer Research and Clinical Cancer Research. He also published several review articles and book chapters. His finding in circulating tumour and other cell biomarkers have been reported as research news in multiple national and international media, including TV, radio, newspaper and online news media. He has filled two patent applications for prostate cancer prognosis using circulating cell biomarkers. He has been serving as editorial board members for a number of international scientific journals.
Professor Tony Whetton is currently the Director of the Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre. He also has a programme of leukaemia research based at the Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre, Christie Hospital. He obtained a PhD in signal transduction research and biophysical chemistry. This was followed by research into membrane structure using electron spin resonance techniques. He then moved into a completely different field of experimental haematology at the Paterson Institute. He left this position to take up a lectureship at UMIST in 1984 where he became the Professor of Cell Biology in 1995 and Head of Department in 200 He joined the School of Medicine at the University of Manchester in 2003 as Professor of Cancer Cell Biology, based at the Christie Hospital. Here he has established a state of the art biological mass spectrometry facility for stem cell and leukaemia research. This research has expanded and developed to include a clinical proteomics research capability, where the objective is to discover new biomarkers associated with the cancers leading to the development of the £26 million Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre which uses proteomics and informatics to define disease mechanisms and biomarkers.
Shanon Seger is a digital pathology imaging specialist at Roche Pharmaceuticals. Shanon’s interest are providing quantitative and reproducible image analysis data and digital pathology solutions to support the understanding of pathology and uncover drugs mechanism of action. Shanon holds a bachelor degree in physiology and a master degree in developmental biology from the University of Strasbourg. She first worked at Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Basel within the neuroscience department where she focused on the development of confocal imaging protocols combined with automated image analysis assays. She then joined Actelion pharmaceuticals to focus on whole slide imaging and to support the development of the in-house image analysis software ORBIT. She currently works at Roche within the digital pathology group where she actively works on the implementation of a LIS system to fully digitalize the lab and develops automated image analysis assays to the pathologists and the different disease areas.
Louis Levy began his life science career with Cepton, a strategy consulting boutique for French mid-size biotechs, where he worked on pharmaceutical development, European commercial launches, and R&D organizations. He was involved in notable licensing transactions in allergy immunotherapy (Stallergenes-Shionogi) and hemophilia (Ipsen-Inspiration Biopharm). Earlier, as a Harvard Blavatnik Fellow, he investigated biotech entrepreneurship trends in NYC and worked on commercialization of the Harvard technology that initially led to the launch of Ultivue. Louis has a MS degree in engineering from the French grande école Telecom Bretagne, and a MBA from Harvard Business School.
Dr. Bevin Gangadharan is a research scientist in Professor Nicole Zitzmann’s lab in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford. He did his DPhil in Professor Zitzmann’s lab where he used proteomics to identify novel serum biomarker candidates for liver fibrosis in hepatitis C patients. More recently he has helped to discover novel NAFLD biomarkers which are patented. Before joining the Zitzmann group he obtained his BSc in Medical Biochemistry at the University of Surrey which included a sandwich year at GlaxoSmithKline where he used proteomics techniques and looked at ways of improving the representation of low abundant plasma proteins which helps with biomarker discovery. Bevin is also on the editorial board for Biomarker Research (an Open Access publication by BioMed Central).
Nicola Curtin is Professor of Experimental Cancer Therapeutics at Newcastle University, UK. Her research has focussed on the development and therapeutic potential of drugs targeting the DNA damage response (DDR): She was a key member of the team that discovered the PARP inhibitor, rucaparib (Rubraca®), and was first to propose (March 2002) the therapeutic potential of PARP inhibitors in BRCA-related cancer. She was the first to demonstrate the synergy between PARP inhibition and ATR inhibitors in 201 Her translational studies involve the development of predictive biomarkers for patient stratification and pharmacodynamic biomarkers to monitor the activity of drugs. Her group was the first to identify (in 2011) that >50% of ovarian cancers are defective in homologous recombination DNA repair using a functional biomarker. She is an inventor on 16 patents, an author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications and editor of 2 books. (Google scholar h-index = 63, citations =16,908)
Paul J. Skipp is an Associate Professor in Proteomics at the University of Southampton and director of the Centre for Proteomic Research. His group address a wide range of complex biological problems and he has published over 50 research articles spanning the areas of clinical ‘omics, microbial proteomics, immunopeptidomics, systems biology and integrative methods for biomarker discovery. He is co-founder and director of TopMD, a pathway biomarker company providing a new data-driven technology to advance precision medicine and the discovery of new biomarkers.
Dr Sikha Saha, Associate Professor of Cerebrovascular Medicine, is working in the Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine at the University of Leeds. Her most important scientific contributions to date are her innovative ideas of novel in vitro organ flow system and biological development of biosensors for non-invasive and minimally invasive detection of biomarkers in cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and metabolic diseases. Her concept of novel in vitro multicellular organ flow system for biomarker analysis and drug toxicity and permeability testing led to effective collaboration with industry and the Queen Mary University of London with successful grant funding from the Innovate UK and the BBSRC. Currently, she is the biological Lead of an EPSRC grant (£1.6 Million). She is the Lead Inventor of a biomarker patent (PCT/GB2013/050560) and co-inventor of a laser based non-invasive glucose sensor patent (PCT/GB2013/050300). Both patents were published and granted in the EU and the USA.
Susan Astley leads research in breast radiomics at the University of Manchester. Her work includes evaluation of novel imaging technologies, developing software to detect early signs of abnormality and discover imaging biomarkers, using eye tracking to learn how new imaging systems are best employed, and working closely with radiologists to achieve clinically useful solutions. As breast density lead for the 55,000 strong Predicting Risk of Cancer At Screening (PROCAS) study she has focused her attention on imaging biomarkers of breast cancer risk, harnessing the power of deep learning to improve risk prediction.
Pierre Arsène is an entrepreneur in deeptech and co-founder & CEO of Mursla Ltd, a Cambridge-based cancer liquid biopsy company. He is an ex-Visiting Researcher at the department of Physics (Cavendish) of the University of Cambridge where he focused on nanosensors and dielectrophoresis research. Prior to this, he was senior Vice President at J.P. Morgan after having spent 10 years in Investment Banking / M&A mostly covering the biotech sector across the world. He advised companies such as Roche, Siemens or Daiichi Sankyo on biotech acquisitions, commercialization and pipeline optimization while managing a team of 25 people. He graduated from HEC Paris Grande Ecole with a MSc. in Management after a classe préparatoire in mathematics.
Céline Pallaud is the Hematology Franchise Lead for Precision Medicine at Novartis Pharma AG. She leads a team across three sites globally, accountable for the precision medicine strategy guiding the drug development plan for all Hematology programs. With a Ph.D. in genetics, Céline’s extensive knowledge in early and late stage drug development across multiple therapeutic areas, including Oncology, Cardiovascular, Diabetes/ Metabolism and Neuroscience has led her team to success across various programs. Céline has several academic faculty appointments including her advisory role at the University of Lorraine and lectureship in Drug Development in the University of Rennes and the University of Nancy.
Eithne Costello gained a B.Sc. and PhD in Pharmacology, at University College Dublin. She undertook post-doctoral training at the Swiss Institute for Cancer Research (ISREC), Lausanne and subsequently at the Institute of Microbiology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She has worked at the University of Liverpool since 1999, where she heads her own research group with a focus on biomarker development for pancreatic cancer diagnosis. She is currently leading a programme called UK Early Detection Initiative for Pancreatic Cancer. This aim of this programme is to learn how to detect pancreatic cancer in individuals newly diagnosed with new-onset diabetes mellitus, and is funded by Cancer Research UK. Her group also has Funding from Pancreatic Cancer Action, Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund, North West Cancer Research and the European Union.
Dr John Timms is Associate Professor of Cancer Proteomics at the EGA Institute for Women’s health, University College London. His research is focused on the discovery and validation of non-invasive biomarkers for the early detection and differential diagnosis of cancer. Mass spectrometry and immunologic proteomic profiling methods are being applied to clinical and pre-diagnosis case-control serum samples biomarker identification and novel machine learning approaches used to derive improved multi-marker algorithms. Dr Timms has published over 90 research articles, reviews, and book chapters and received multiple grant awards. He was Secretary and is a Director of the British Society for Proteome Research, Chair of the London Biological Mass Spectrometry Discussion Group and co-led on a successful Institute Athena SWAN Gold Award
Dr. Bernadett Szabados is a clinical research fellow at Barts Cancer Institute, London, UK. She trained in several European centers including Brussels, Belgium and Munich, Germany, having had an earlier career in urology, now continuing a thesis in translational oncology. Her specialist interests are focused on urological malignancies including but not limited to renal- and transitional cell carcinoma with the goal of individualizing and improving care and treatment. Her interests span from basic laboratory research to clinical trials. She participated in over 10 international, randomized, phase 3 trials and involved in the process leading to the regulatory approval of axitinib/pembrolizumab in kidney cancer.
Prof. Jose’s research interests are in the areas of photonic glasses, femtosecond pulsed laser deposition and plasma implantation, planar waveguide devices on glass, silicon and polymer platforms, and photonic biosensors. The ultrafast laser plasma doping (ULPD) process that he invented has been the core technology behind novel optoelectronic applications that he is developing. He is leading a large EPSRC-UK functional materials manufacturing research project for developing ULPD for application in advanced integrated photonics for optical data communication (www.seamatics.org). He is cofounder of a spinout company Optimus Vitrum Ltd which is focussing on toughened glass screens for various applications.
Prof. Jose received his MSc and PhD degrees in Physics from University of Calicut, India and Mahatma Gandhi University, India respectively. He was a research fellow at the Polytechnic of Milan, Italy during 2001-2002. In 2003 he joined the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati and was a Senior Lecturer/Assistant Professor there until 2007. In 2007, he joined School of Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Leeds, UK as Senior Research Fellow and Project Manager, and since March 2013 he is the Professor and Chair in Functional Materials there.
Ned Sherry, Manager of Research and Business Development at Adaptive Biotechnologies, is experienced in infectious disease, epidemiology, and oncology. Mr. Sherry will provide an overview of Adaptive’s immunosequencing platform and share several case studies highlighting applications of the technology in the IO space. Join him and learn how the immunoSEQ Assays combine bias-controlled multiplex PCR with high-throughput sequencing and expert bioinformatics analysis to deliver accurate, quantitative sequencing results for millions of T and B cells receptors.
Justin Stebbing is Professor of Cancer Medicine and Oncology at Imperial College London. He is Editor-in-Chief of Oncogene, Springer Nature's cancer journal, and has published over 600 papers. He has helped design and undertake the pivotal studies for a Trastuzumab biosimilar (CT-P6) and will discuss the regulatory issues and trials performed here as we make these high value drugs more broadly available, across the world.
Mikkel Noerholm is an international Life Science executive with 20+ years of experience from industry and academia. He is currently heading the product development efforts at Exosome Diagnostics, a developer of minimally invasive biofluid Molecular Diagnostics and “liquid biopsies” and a part of Bio-Techne. During his career, he has developed numerous life science products now sold and marketed by companies like Qiagen, Roche and Thermo as well as several molecular diagnostic assays currently marketed by Exosome Diagnostics. Mikkel was born and raised in Denmark where he also received his PhD in nucleic acid hybridization. He spent several years in the US, including a stint at Harvard Medical School and MGH and he received his MBA in Entrepreneurship from Babson College. He now lives in Munich, Germany with his wife and daughter where he is anxiously awaiting the start of the skiing season.
Valerie Daussin Laurent is business developer at Aalborg University Hospital in Denmark. She has 20 years of experience within innovation, patenting and technology transfer. With a background as legal adviser in Intellectual Property Rights, she assists researchers from the hospital from discovery to the industrial phase. The support includes patenting, fundraising as well as business development and negotiation with the partners. For the last 2 years, she has been project leader for the BIC consortium. BIC is an interreg program in the Baltic Sea Region that develops support tools for researchers, technology transfer offices and SMEs for a better and more successful commercialisation of biomarkers inventions. The current results of the BIC project is a set of tools that conduct and guide the user through the discovery and innovative process, integrating not only technical and clinical task but also commercial and regulatory considerations.
