Innovations in cell and gene therapy

Dr. Cristina Conforti Andreoni obtained her PhD in Translational Medicine at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy, in collaboration with SIgN, A-STAR Singapore, researching the dendritic cell response to danger signals. After a post-doctoral fellowship on the same project and her role as a Scientific Officer at the biotech startup Ayoxxa at National University of Singapore, she joined Miltenyi Biotec in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany as Global Product Manager for Cell Culture. In 2018, she took over the Group Leader position of the Translational Immunology Team with focus on myeloid cells, B cells, and NK cells. And since 2023, she is the Portfolio Strategy Manager for Immunotherapy.

Dr. Rita Pfeifer studied Biochemistry at the University of Tübingen, Germany, followed by a position as Research Fellow at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, USA. Thereafter, she returned to Germany to start her PhD at the University of Tübingen and Miltenyi Biotec. Since 2018, she continues her work with Miltenyi Biotec as Team Coordinator Research and Development, focusing on in vivo and ex vivo tracking and the development of CAR T cell therapies against solid tumors.

Dr. Zhaojun Yin is a Senior Scientist at Genentech (CA, USA) in the BioAnalytical Sciences Department. He supports the in vitro biological characterization of large molecules with Fc-mediated effector function assays. He also leads the development of immunogenicity assays including NAb and immunogenicity risk ranking assays, and cellular kinetics assays for TCR-T cell product using flow cytometry.

Dr. Marsilius Mues joined the R&D Department of Miltenyi Biotec in 2017. He currently leads interdisciplinary research and development in the field of immuno-oncology and cellular therapeutics, with a focus on CAR T cell engineering for personalized immunotherapy. He oversees the establishment of multiparametric immune assays for functional characterization of engineered T cells, along with automated data acquisition and analysis tools for translational research, cell therapy manufacturing, and patient immune monitoring during clinical trials. He conducted his PhD studies at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology (Munich, Germany) on T cell signaling during autoimmune disease and completed his postdoctoral research at UCSF (CA, USA), where he focused on novel combinatorial therapies using high-complexity lentiviral shRNA & CRISPR/Cas9 libraries for T cell leukemia.

Dr. Antonio Perez-Martinez, MD, PhD, is a Medical Specialist in Pediatrics and the Head of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Service at the University Hospital La Paz, Madrid, Spain. He is also the Head of the Pediatric Department at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Principle Investigator at the Foundation for Biomedical Research, Hospital La Paz, and has experience as the Principal Investigator of over 20 active research projects.

Dr. Giedlin is currently the VP, Head of Technical Operations at Senti BioSciences supporting the allogeneic CAR NK cell programs. Before his joining Senti BioSciences, he led the PD groups at PACT Pharma (non-viral process for generating autologous neoTcR+ T cells), Poseida (non-viral process for generating autologous CAR Ts), and Novartis (clinical and commercial manufacturing process for Kymriahâ). His experience covers over 25 years of various approaches to harness the immune response to treat cancer and infectious disease, starting with Proleukinâ rIL-2 (aldesleukin; Chiron), Oncolytic adenovirus (Onyx), Listeria-based cancer vaccines (Cerus), and CCR5 knockout CD4+ T cells for HIV+ patients (Sangamo). In addition, he led the implementation of AAV clinical manufacturing to support the Hemophilia, LSD, and neurodegenerative disease programs.

Dr. Daniel Schäfer is Team Coordinator R&D at Miltenyi Biotec. After studying Biology at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), University of Manchester (UK), and University of Cologne (Germany), he did his PhD in Molecular Medicine at the University Medical Center Göttingen (Germany). At Miltenyi Biotec, Daniel uses his interdisciplinary education and scientific experience to push forward the development of new technologies for CAR T cell therapy, their pre-clinical evaluation and translation into clinical applications.

Miriam L. Ammari, M.Sc., is a scientist passionate about cancer research and immunology. She has 10 years of extensive experience in cutting-edge and novel cell therapy technologies such as CRISPR-based gene-editing, CAR T cells, CAR NK cells, and several other GMP protocols, including expansion and cryopreservation of feeder cells. She is proficient in a wide range of highly specialized aseptic cell manipulation techniques, cell culture, and development of new procedures.

Nina Möker, PhD, is a R&D Reagents Manager for the development of allogeneic cell therapy for cancer at Miltenyi Biotec in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. She is leading an innovative team with the focus of developing the comprehensive solution package for the manufacturing and analytics of engineered NK cells. For the past five years she has been working together with the Miltenyi clinical production and clinical development teams to overcome the challenges of manufacturing NK cells with high functionality in a GMP-compliant and feeder cell–free system. Prior to joining Miltenyi Biotec and dedicating herself to allogeneic cell therapy, Nina has gained strong experience in big and medium-sized pharma focusing on antibody- and small molecule-based drug discovery.

Prof. Evelyn Ullrich, MD, is Professor of Cellular Immunology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She is Head of the research unit “Experimental Immunology” and of the “Cancer Survivorship Unit” at the UCT, University Hospital of the J.W. Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She obtained her medical degree from the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg and was further trained at the Universities Regensburg, Erlangen and Paris. She is a board-certified specialist in internal medicine and immunology. As Junior Professor she headed a Max Eder research group sponsored by the German Cancer Aid. Since 2012, she is leading the Experimental Immunology Unit at the Children’s Hospital in Frankfurt, supported by the LOEWE Center for Cell and Gene Therapy Frankfurt. She has been involved in the characterization of natural killer and innate lymphoid cell subsets. The current research of her group addresses the understanding of immune regulation following SCT and the development of cellular immunotherapeutic with focus on genetic engineering of immune cells towards translational clinical application. Currently, Evelyn Ullrich is speaker of an NK cell consortium in the Priority Program ‘Translational Oncology’ supported by the German Cancer Aid. Since 2020, she is co-speaker of the Mildred Scheel Career Center (MSNZ) in Frankfurt, which is an excellence program for promoting young scientists in cancer research.

Dr. Rizwan Romee, MD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Haploidentical Donor Transplant Program at Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Boston, USA. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Romee Lab for NK Cell Gene Manipulation and Therapy at DFCI. The research focus of his laboratory is genetic manipulation of the human NK cells to enhance their anti-tumor function and simultaneously modulate the highly immune suppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). His work at Washington University helped describe human memory-like NK cells with enhanced anti-tumor activity and he led a first in-human clinical trial of these cells in patients with relapsed and refractory AML demonstrating safety and promising activity. He is currently leading the translational NK cell program at DFCI evaluating memory-like NK cells in combination with novel immune-modulatory agents in patients with advanced malignancies including AML and MDS relapsed after stem cell transplantation, MRD+ multiple myeloma (in combination with CD38 ARM) and head and neck cancer (in combination with CTLA-4 blockade/ipilimumab and IL-15 super-agonist).

Dr. Dominik Lock is leading the research group Early Drug Development at Miltenyi Biotec. His work evolves around non-viral gene engineering, process development as well as early pre-clinical development. His team solves challenges related to adoptive T cell therapies by inventing innovative technologies and novel manufacturing processes. By improving the potential of gene-engineered T cells, Dominik Lock strongly contributes to the company’s vision to ‘make cancer history’.

Caroline Brandes, M.Sc. Molecular Biomedicine, joined Miltenyi Biotec in 2019 as a researcher in the early-stage drug development group of Dominik Lock. Since then, Caroline Brandes has been developing novel CAR and TCR T cell technologies for cancer immunotherapy, as well as non-viral T cell engineering and manufacturing processes with a focus on electroporation-based and genome-editing techniques.

Juliana Dias graduated from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro with a BSc in Biophysics/Biotechnology, she then completed her PhD in Biophysics. Dr. Dias worked in clinical cell therapy in the Brazilian National Institute of Cancer for six years before joining UCL in 2017 to set up the CAR T manufacturing platform at the CCGTT. Dr. Dias currently leads the CAR T manufacturing team for the development and delivery of new products for the UCL Phase 1 clinical trials. The trial have delivered almost 100 product batches for patients enrolled in 8 different Phase 1 CAR T trials, 3 actively recruiting patients with B cell malignancies and Multiple Myeloma and with 8 new trials at different stages of development and implementation.