Archived Content

Optimizing Protein Expression Speaker Biographies

William H. Brondyk, Ph.D., Senior Scientific Director, Biologics Discovery, Genzyme – A Sanofi Company 
William Brondyk has been at Genzyme Corporation for the past 10 years and currently manages a group that is responsible for the expression, purification, and analysis of recombinant proteins for discovery efforts within the Boston Hub.  In addition, his group is responsible for the generation and humanization of monoclonal antibodies for potential therapeutics.  Prior to working at Genzyme, William worked at EMD Serono where he also managed a protein expression/purification group.  William received his Ph.D. in oncology from the McArdle Laboratory of Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sabine Geisse, Ph.D., Director, NLS, Novartis Pharma AG 
Sabine Geisse is a recognized expert in eukaryotic cell biology with >20 years of experience that she gathered with her PhDs in Nutrition and Human Biology at the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen and Philipps-University in Marburg and as a postdoc at the University of Essen, Germany. She joined Sandoz/Novartis in 1988 within Discovery Technologies and is a scientific expert for biomolecules production. In 2004, she received the Novartis Leading Scientist award.

Sabine Geisse built up and implemented an expression platform for transient and stable expression technologies in eukaryotic cell lines and developed, among others, a HEK293 expression system for transient expression on small and large scale for the rapid production of recombinant proteins.

Gerald Carson, Senior Principal Scientist, Biologics, Abbott Bioresearch Center, Inc. 

Kelvin H. Lee, Gore Professor of Chemical Engineering & Director, Delaware Biotechnology Institute, University of Delaware 
Kelvin H. Lee is Gore Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware and is Director of the Delaware Biotechnology Institute. He received a BSE in Chemical Engineering from Princeton and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Caltech. He spent several years in the Biotechnology Institute at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland and also completed a postdoc in Caltech's Biology Division. He has been recognized in a number of ways: DuPont Young Professor award, NSF CAREER award, Cornell's Barger '50 Engineering College Excellence in Teaching award, Cornell’s Menschel Award for Distinguished Scholarship, Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award and by Technology Review as a Top Innovator in Business and Technology. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Kyongbum Lee, Ph.D., Associate Professor & Acting Chair, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Tufts University Kyongbum Lee is currently the Chair of the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Tufts University. He had a Visiting Faculty appointment at the Obesity Research Center of Boston University School of Medicine. He is also the Program Director for Bioengineering at Tufts' School of Engineering. He joined the faculty of the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Tufts University as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2002. Dr. Lee obtained his Ph.D. in chemical engineering with a minor in applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 1995. His research interests are metabolic engineering, tissue engineering, and systems biology. His research seeks to analyze, design and optimize the function of native and engineered cells and tissues through the rational manipulation of cellular metabolism. Honors include a Mellon Foundation Research Semester Fellowship, Jay Bailey Young Investigator Award for Best Paper in Metabolic Engineering, Invitation to National Academies Keck Futures Conference, and Tufts University Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award. He currently serves on the editorial boards to the journals Metabolites and Adipocytes, and is a section editor for Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering, Biological Engineering and Current Opinions in Biotechnology, Tissue & Cell Pathway Engineering.
 

Peter Rhode, Ph.D., Vice President, Research & Development, Altor BioScience Corporation 
Dr. Rhode has served as the Vice President of Research and Development of Altor since its inception in 2002.  Dr. Rhode has made significant contributions toward the design and advancement of Altor’s proprietary technologies and currently directs the Company’s efforts to develop these technologies for therapeutic application against cancer, viral infections and inflammatory diseases.  He is an inventor on over 20 issued patents and an author of numerous scientific publications.  Dr. Rhode was among the team of scientists that formed Sunol Molecular in 1996 where he served as Research Director developing therapeutic approaches for treating human autoimmune diseases.  From 1991 to 1996, he was with the Dade Division of Baxter International Inc.  Dr. Rhode received his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Aude Carlier, Ph.D., Co-Founder, President & CSO, Algenics 
Aude Carlier holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology. She started to work on microalgal biotechnology in 1999 at the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer). In 2003, Dr. Aude Carlier and Dr. Jean-Paul Cadoret uncovered the benefits of microalgae for therapeutic glycoprotein production.  They developed global expertise in a broad field covering the genetic transformation of microalgae as well as upstream and downstream processes for the recovery of recombinant products, laying the foundation of Algenics in December 2007.

Robert M. Petrovich, Ph.D., Head, Protein Expression Core Facility, Laboratory of Structural Biology, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH 
I went to Hope College in Holland Michigan where I majored in Chemistry. My graduate work was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Perry Frey’s group at the Enzyme Institute. After receiving my Ph.D. in Biochemistry, I did a short post doc with Judith Burstyn in the Chemistry Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This was followed by a post doc position with Eileen Jaffe at the Fox Chase Cancer Center and Norman Schechter at the University of Pennsylvania. My first “real” job was with Novartis/Syngenta designing high throughput assay for agricultural pest control. One of my many projects was to set up a system to deliver 100 new target proteins from validated gene targets per year. After the Syngenta merger, I moved to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to set up and run a protein expression core facility, which is where I am today.

René Assenberg, Ph.D., Investigator III, Expertise Platform Proteases (EPP), Novartis Pharma AG / NIBR I have been a Research Investigator at the Expertise Protease Platform at Novartis since 2009, where I lead a group specialized in producing, primarily human, proteins in insect and mammalian expression systems for profiling and biophysical applications. My core expertise is in transient insect and mammalian, as well as baculovirus protein expression technologies, combined with protein purification.
Prior to joining Novartis I worked for 7 years at the Oxford Protein Production Facility (OPPF), Oxford, UK as a post-doctoral researcher, where I established a high-throughput baculovirus protein expression pipeline for X-Ray crystallography studies. In addition, during that time I was involved in a European-wide collaborative project called Vizier, aimed at the structural elucidation of viral replication proteins, where I applied (and contributed to) the OPPF high throughput protein production capabilities to produce & crystallize proteins of pathogenic RNA viruses.

I received my Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Southampton, UK, (2001), my MSc in Biology at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands (1997) and my BSc in Microbiology at the Polytechnic School of Eindhoven, Netherlands (1995).

Ciarán N. Cronin, Ph.D., Head, Parallel Protein Production Group, Pfizer Global Research & Development 
Dr Ciarán N. Cronin heads the Parallel Protein Production Group (PPPG) at Pfizer’s La Jolla campus in San Diego, California. The Group is part of Pfizer’s Global Chemistry line and is responsible for protein expression construct screening and scale-up for all proteins required to support Pfizer’s small molecule oncology drug discovery pipeline. The Group also has responsibilities for gene-to-protein crystal efforts on a number of in-house structure-based drug design (SBDD) targets. Dr Cronin joined Pfizer in 2004 from Syrrx Inc., where he was Associate Director of Molecular Biology and Protein Chemistry. Prior to Syrrx, Dr Cronin was an Assistant Research Biochemist at the University of California San Francisco (1995-2001), where he focussed on protein engineering, developing a novel bifunctional carnitine/choline acetyltransferase. Before coming to the United States Dr Cronin held positions with Bioresearch Ireland (1992-1994; staff scientist in Dublin, Ireland), Biotrin Research (1990-1992; senior scientist in Dublin, Ireland), and Qlone Ltd. (1988-1989; senior scientist in Brisbane, Australia). Dr Cronin completed three post doctorates: Queens University, Ontario, Canada (1983-1995), University of California at Berkeley, USA (1986-1987), and Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (1987). Dr Cronin received both his Ph.D. and his primary honors degree in Biochemistry from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

Krista Bowman, Ph.D., Senior Scientific Manager, Structural Biology, Genentech, Inc. 
Krista Bowman has been a Senior Scientific Manager at Genentech, Inc. for the past five years. She manages the Structural Biology Protein Expression Group, providing high quality protein expression systems using both E. coli and baculovirus to support protein reagent requirements for basic research, x-ray crystallography, NMR, and the Small Molecule Program. Prior to coming to Genentech, Inc. she worked at Exelixis, Inc. and Axys Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Krista received her Ph. D. in biochemistry from Emory University under the direction of Paul Doetsch, characterizing DNA base excision repair enzymes from yeast. She studied transcription-coupled DNA repair during her postdoctoral fellowship with Phil Hanawalt at Stanford University where she determined the repair characteristics of several human cell lines, including ones isolated from patients suffering from xeroderma pigmentosum complementation group C.

Anne Serdakowski London, Ph.D., Investigator II & Lab Head, Mid-Scale Protein Production, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Inc. 
Anne London currently works in Pre-Clinical Protein Production at Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research. She is a Lab Head at the Cambridge, MA site responsible for the “mid-scale” production and purification of proteins and antibodies supporting pre-clinical research. She earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry/Biophysics from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2007 under the direction of Dr. Jonathan Dordick studying non-aqueous biocatalysis.  Anne London graduated from The University of Rhode Island in 2003 with a B.S. in Biological Sciences.

Greg Bleck, R&D Platform Director Biologics, Catalent Pharma Solutions 
Greg joined Catalent in 1998 as Director of Molecular Biology & Transgenics. He has a broad background in molecular biology, mammalian gene expression, cell culture and transgenic animals with 13 years experience with the organization. Greg holds a Bachelor’s degree in Dairy Science and has a Doctorate in Endocrinology-Reproductive Physiology from University of Wisconsin-Madison. He performed postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois-Urbana working in the areas of gene regulation and expression. Greg has published over 55 research papers and co-authored three book chapters.