Professor Frangi is Diamond Jubilee Chair in Computational Medicine and Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies at the University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, with joint appointments at the School of Computing and the School of Medicine. He directs the CISTIB Center for Computational Imaging and Simulation Technologies in Biomedicine. He is Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. Prof Frangi is the Scientific Director of the Leeds Centre for HealthTech Innovation and Director of Research and Innovation of the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics.
Manuel Corpas is a lecturer in Genomics at the University of Westminster, London, and serves as Scientific Director of Cambridge Precision Medicine, a company associated with the Cambridge University business accelerator (ideaSpace). Manuel is an expert in providing clinical genomics interpretation services to healthcare institutions. He is also a visiting tutor/lecturer at the University of Cambridge and director of the expert course in clinical genetics and personalized medicine at the International University of La Rioja.
He has more than 60 scientific publications in international journals and one book. He graduated in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Navarra, with a master’s and PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Manchester, and 3.5 years of postdoctoral experience at the Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK.
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2011 at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal. From 2011 to 2012, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in proteomics at Prof. Chris Overall laboratory, University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada. In 2012, Ricardo moved to the Leiden University Medical Hospital, The Netherlands, after being awarded a Marie Curie Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship. There, he joined Prof. Liam McDonnell laboratory to develop and apply mass spectrometry imaging-based methods to study biomolecular changes in the brain associated with migraine. Ricardo moved to the UK in 2015 to join the Proteomics Department at Immunocore Ltd, Abingdon, which he now leads. At Immunocore, most of his work focuses on the identification of targets for the development of immunotherapies against cancer, autoimmune, and infectious diseases. He is interested in the application of omics technologies to profile the immunopeptidome and understand disease-specific mechanisms to help developing improved therapeutic strategies.
Dr John Maher is the scientific founder and chief scientific officer of Leucid Bio. He is also a clinical immunologist who leads the "CAR Mechanics" research group within King's College London. He played a key role in the early development of second generation (CD28) CAR technology while a visiting fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, an approach that has achieved clinical impact in haematological malignancies. His research group is focused on the development of adoptive immunotherapy using CAR engineered and gamma delta T-cells, with a primary emphasis on solid tumour types. In addition, he is a consultant immunologist within King's Health Partners and Eastbourne Hospital.
Jenny has an MA in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University, a PhD in the epidemiology of schizophrenia from the University of Cambridge and completed post-doctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She joined Cambridge Cognition in 2008 and worked i Jenny has an MA in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University, a PhD in the epidemiology of schizophrenia from the University of Cambridge and completed post-doctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She joined Cambridge Cognition in 2008 and worked in the clinical trial, healthcare, and R&D functions before joining the senior management team in 2014 and becoming CSO in 2016.
She has worked on the design and analysis of more than 100 cognitive trials and is the author of 60+ scientific publications and six patents. She has led IP strategy, KOL networking and the scientific validation of medical devices for regulatory approvaln the clinical trial, healthcare, and R&D functions before joining the senior management team in 2014 and becoming CSO in 2016. She has worked on the design and analysis of more than 100 cognitive trials and is the author of 60+ scientific publications and six patents. She has led IP strategy, KOL networking and the scientific validation of medical devices for regulatory approval.
Christoph A. Merten is a Professor for biomedical microfluidics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL; www.epfl.ch/labs/lbmm) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He also holds an adjunct position at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR).
In parallel to his academic career, Christoph has gained significant industry and entrepreneurship experience: He successfully commercialized microfluidic technology for genomic applications (e.g. licensed to Diagenode for the BioRuptor OneTM), collaborated with big pharma (including Roche and GSK) and worked for many years as a consultant. Furthermore, he is the scientific founder and chief consultant of Veraxa Biotech (www.velabs-therapeutics.com), an antibody discovery company that successfully secured 2 investment rounds within just one year and which is constantly growing and acquiring deals with large pharma industry.
Christoph holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry (directed evolution) from the University of Frankfurt and did postdoctoral studies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (Cambridge, UK) and the Institute de Science et d’Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) in Strasbourg, France. Before moving to Switzerland he lead a group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany
Andrew has been leading translational biology teams for nearly 20 years with international industrial experience developing both small and large molecule oncology drugs. He began his career on the faculty of the University of Kentucky before joining N of One Therapeutics, MedImmune (USA) and subsequently AstraZeneca (UK). Andrew has brought multiple therapeutic candidates into and through clinical development including immunotherapies, antibody/drug conjugates, DNA damage/repair modulators and classical cell signalling inhibitors.
Andrew has a BSci degree from the University of Toronto in Canada, and a PhD in molecular genetics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published over 40 papers in peer-reviewed journals and serves on the Molecular and Cellular Medicine Board of the MRC (UK).
He worked on early stage product development of AAV mediated gene therapy for diseases such hemophilia, neuronal and eye disorders. He successfully developed the pilot scale manufacturing platforms using suspension cell lines in upstream and chromatography in downstream process. He also contributed for assay development. He served as Research Scientist from 2015 to 2017 and as Senior Research Scientist from 2017 to 2019. He also developed early stage designs and assays for CAR-T research. In 2018 to 2019, he completed Diploma in International Business Management from Ahmedabad Management Association in affiliation with California State University. In 2019, he joined Immuneel Therapeutics as Head of Vector & CAR-T Manufacturing. His work encompasses the process development and GMP grade manufacturing of autologous CAR-T cells for clinical trials. The disease areas mainly include the leukemias and lymphomas. He has 7 peer reviewed publications in the field of gene therapy and functional genomics.
Dr Milena Kalaitsidou PhD is the Principal Scientist in the Pre-Clinical Safety Group at the Department of Research at Instil Bio. She attained a Masters in Immunology and Immunogenetics and PhD in Cancer Sciences from the University of Manchester. Her PhD focused on the understanding T cell responses towards leukemic fusion proteins and the potential application in cell therapy treatments. Subsequently, she led projects developing CAR chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for ovarian cancer in collaboration with Oxford Biomedica and the University of Manchester.
Her adoptive cell therapy interests were further cultivated during her fellowship between University of Manchester and GSK, whereby she worked on developing tumour infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy with or without engineering for an array of cancer types. She continued the TIL therapy development by joining Instil Bio where she has led TIL engineering projects from concept to clinical application
Dr Stuart Hannah is CEO of Microplate Dx Ltd, an innovative, award-winning diagnostics-focussed spinout company from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Dr Hannah has a First-Class Honours degree and PhD in Electronic & Electrical Engineering from Strathclyde and has 10+ years’ academic and industrial experience in developing biosensors and diagnostics for healthcare. Dr Hannah has a wide range of interests from life sciences, in-vitro diagnostics, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and electrochemistry, to algorithm development, data analytics, product development and commercialisation.
As full-time CEO and co-founder of Microplate Dx Limited, Dr Hannah oversees a dedicated team of professionals who are aiming to become world leaders in rapid, antibiotic susceptibility testing at the point-of-care for a wide range of pathogens including urinary tract infections, sepsis, fungal infections etc. Microplate Dx’s mission is to eliminate ‘best-guess’ antibiotic prescribing, reducing the burden of antimicrobial resistance and saving countless lives.
Amin Hajitou completed his PhD at The University of Liège, Belgium. During his PhD work he acquired extensive experience in gene delivery technologies. Then, he completed his postdoctoral training at the MD-Anderson Cancer Center in Texas-USA, where he gained expertise in bacteriophage (phage)-guided delivery of nucleic acids. Importantly, he designed a novel hybrid phage vector for targeted gene transfer and showed first success of systemic gene targeting to cancer in vivo. His team and independent groups reported efficacy of intravenous cancer gene therapy in rodents and pet dogs. Phase 1 clinical trials in cancer patients have started in 2022. In 2008, Hajitou established his research team as a Lecturer, at Imperial College London, where he became Senior Lecturer in 2013, then Reader in 2016 and Professor of Targeted Therapeutics in 2019. His research team has become a leading authority in phage-guided delivery technologies. His leadership in the field has resulted in various awards, patent applications and two start-up companies.
Dr Williams graduated from Cardiff University in 1996 with a BSc in Genetics and later, in 2005 a PhD focusing on the genetics of schizophrenia. In 2013 he moved to UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and began working on the genomics of rare paediatric diseases where he ran the GOSgene group. In 2019 Dr Williams returned to Cardiff University to take up a post a senior lecturer in bioinformatics where his work is focused on the use of Omics techniques to better understand the genomic basis of rare diseases.
Nagy is a founder and Head of R&D of MiNA Therapeutics. For over three decades Nagy has been at the forefront of clinical research and clinical practice in cancer. He pioneered the first clinical trial in the use of adenovirus and plasmid for the treatment of liver cancer, as well as the use of plasmid gene therapy in hydrodynamic gene delivery. Currently, he is driving the development of an saRNA drug (a new class of medicines) which is currently being trialed in patients with liver cancer in eight UK centres, and sites in Singapore and Taiwan (OUTREACH study, ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT02716012), a second trial in patients with solid tumours (TIMEPOINT study, ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT 04105335) in the UK, USA, Europe, Singapore and Taiwan and OUTREACH2 study, which is a randomised phase II follow-on study in patient with viral HCC (ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT 04710641). He has published widely in gene therapy, stem cell therapy, oligonucleotides, endoscopy and surgery. Previously Nagy was founder and Chairman of EMcision Limited (acquired by Boston Scientific Inc in 2018). Nagy is Lead Clinician and Head of the Department of HPB Surgery at Imperial College London
Dr. Mark Throsby gained a PhD in Immunology from Monash University Melbourne, Australia and spent four years as a research fellow with CNRS in Paris. Dr Throsby started his industry career at the formation of Crucell NV and worked for 8 years there in various roles finally as Director of Antibody discovery. He joined Merus NV in 2008 as CSO and lead research at the company until 2020. Currently he is providing advice to entrepreneurs and operational support to life science companies. In that capacity he joined Gadeta in 2020 and is currently serving as COO/CSO. He sits on the board of ONA Therapeutics Srl and is Chairman of Alethiomics Ltd.
John undertook his PhD in 2004 under the supervision of Dr. David Gilham and Prof. Robert Hawkins at the University of Manchester. During this time his main interest was uncovering the signalling and molecular interactions of chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) and development of novel costimulatory CARs. In 2010 John moved to the labs of Prof. David Price and Prof. Andrew Sewell at Cardiff University where he focussed on T-cell receptor (TC R) gene transfer, using it as a tool to understand biological phenomena such as alloreactivity and TCR cross-reactivity, as well as further developing adoptive cell therapy strategies. In 2013 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust/NISCHR ISSF research fellowship within the Institute of Infection and Immunity at Cardiff University studying cross-reactivity profiles of virus specific T-cells. John has been Director of Cell Therapy Research at Immetacyte (formally Cellular Therapeutics) since 2014
