Frank Walsh is a senior pharma and biotech executive with extensive experi­ence in drug discovery and development. He was a former EVP and global head of research at Wyeth Pharma, SVP and head of the Neurology CEDD at GSK and VP of Neuroscience at SB. Prior to that he had a successful academic career in neuroscience research and was the Sir William Dunn Professor of Pa­thology at Guy’s Hospital, London. Currently he is CEO of Ossianix, a founder of Antagonis and was chairman of Covagen and Protaffin.

Martin earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Basel, Swit­zerland studying molecular mechanism of inflammation at the Max-Planck- Institute for Immunology in Freiburg, Germany. In addition, Martin received an MBA from the Edinburgh Business School (UK). Before joining the pharma­ceutical industry he spent 4 years as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Richard Scheller at Stanford University Medical School elucidating the biochemical mechanisms underlying neurotransmitter secretion. In 2000, he joined Boehringer Ingelheim’s Oncology Drug Discovery Department and held positions with increasing responsibility advancing first-in-class oncology projects into the clinic. Martin joined Roche in 2006 in Basel and has held a number of positions since then. As director, global business development, he identified and evaluated external licensing and M&A opportunities in the therapeutic area of Oncology. He was also assigned project leader for clinical oncology Antibody programs including trastuzumab-DM1 (T- DM1), a first-in-class Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC) project. As senior biomarker & ex­perimental medicine leader he was heading a group of drug developers and clinicians that lead the development and implementation of biomarker and personalised health care (PHC) strategies for oncology programs and liaised with the diagnostics division to co-develop IVDs and companion diagnostics.

In his current role as head of discovery in large molecule research, Martin is responsible for a team of approx. 80 scientists and research associates who generate and profile new therapeutic antibodies for the different therapeutic areas within pRED. Furthermore the discovery unit is responsible for design­ing and discovering novel biotherapeutic formats including pREDs proprietary bispecific antibody format CrossMab and the brain shuttle technology to com­bat brain disorders. In addition, Martin is the administrative site head for the large molecule research unit at Penzberg, an organisation of approx. 230 FTE responsible for the design, discovery, development and delivery of differenti­ated biotherapeutics at pharma-grade quality.

Brian Fennell is a senior principal scientist in the BioMedicine Design Group, at Pfizer Grange Castle, Dublin, Ireland. Brian is coming up to 10 years in the BMD group/Pfizer and his group is responsible for the discovery and molecular engineering of novel protein therapeutics to treat a wide spectrum of human diseases. Prior to joining Pfizer, Brian was awarded an IRCSET fellowship and worked as a post-doctoral researcher focusing on tubulin as a potential drug target in the malarial parasite plasmodium falciparum at the Moyne Insti­tute of Preventive Medicine, Trinity College Dublin. He obtained his degree from University College Dublin (UCD) and PhD from the Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Brian has attended and presented at numerous scientific workshops and conferences and has published book chapters and original research in numerous journals such as ‘The Journals of Molecular Biology’, ‘PNAS’, ‘Im­munology, Molecular Biochemical Parasitology’, ‘Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and in mAbs’.

Dr. Marina Feschenko is currently a principle scientist at Biogen. She has been with the company for 6 years. Marina is a group leader in bioassay develop­ment for biologics and gene therapy drug candidates. She previously worked for Pfizer and Adolor Corporation. Marina holds a Ph.D. from Shemyakin In­stitute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Russia where her work was focused on monoclonal Antibody generation and characterisation. Dr. Feschenko under­went postdoctoral training in cell biology and signaling at MGH and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Juergen Schaefer is currently Laboratory Head for Mass Spectrometry in Analytical Sciences of Sanofi Research & Revelopment in Frankfurt. He re­ceived his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Prof. Michael Karas at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt (MALDI-TOF-MS) and has more than 20 years of experience in Mass Spectrometry of Biopolymers. Since 2000 he worked in Protein Biomarker Discovery using Proteomics Mass spectrometry at Pro­teome Sciences. He developed Quantitative MS-based Techniques (e.g. TMT, Tandem Mass Tags) for Peptide and Protein Profiling. After joining Sanofi in 2009, he is mainly responsible for Characterization of Peptides and Proteins with Mass Spectrometric Tools in combination with Separation Methods for Analytical Sciences as well as for Characterization of Monoclonal Antibodies for Bioanalytics & Formulation in Frankfurt.

Kay is a senior principal scientist in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Division of pRED (Pharma Research and Early Development) at the Roche Innovation Center Munich. He joined Pharma Research Penzberg in 2003 and since then works in large molecule research and bioanalytics. Among his tasks are the development and validation of bioanalytical assays for analysis of pharmaco­kinetics, soluble targets and anti-drug antibodies (ADAs) of biologics in pre­clinical as well as in clinical studies. Kay has been involved in several projects of therapeutic proteins and Antibodies from preclinical up to in-market stages.

Apart from his current function as head of bioanalytical sciences 1, he was also project leader for early technical development of therapeutic Antibod­ies. Kay led the Ang2-VEGF-CrossMab team for three years from cell line development to entry into human (Clinical Phase 1). Kay holds a diploma in biochemistry. He received his PhD from Martin-Luther-University, Halle- Wittenberg, Institute of Biotechnology in 2000. Kay joined Roche Diagnostics GmbH, Germany, in 2000 and worked for three years within the Diagnostics Unit on the identification of new diagnostics markers. He has authored/co-authored numerous publications in the fields of large molecule research and bioanalysis including immunogenicity testing for biologics.

Senior researcher in structure, design & informatics providing scientific proj­ect support for drug discovery on a broad range of target proteins in the fields of small molecules and biotherapeutics. Dr. Steinmetz obtained her Ph.D. in biophysics from Brandeis University, Boston, MA and her diploma in pharmacy from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Dr. Ulrich Rümenapp works within the biological development organisation of Bayer AG, where he is responsible for the transfer of Bayer’s pipeline candidates (antibodies and antibody drug conjugates) to external manufacturing partners and regulatory submission and launch preparations. Prior to working in development, Ulrich was head of biotech projects in product supply biotech at Bayer, where he was responsible for contract manu­facturing partnerships in the field of biotech¬nological drug substances, drug products and interdisciplinary project management with the goal to ensure market supply. Before it was acquired by Bayer, he held a similar position at Schering AG, and before that he worked in the production and logistics department of Schering. Ulrich studied chemistry and holds a PhD in biosciences. He has several years of experience in academic research in the field of signal transduction and as an assistant teacher in the field of general pharmacology. Currently, his area of expertise is the setup and management of external relationships for the development and supply of bio-pharmaceutical products.

Dr. Stefan Wieschalka joined Rentschler Biotechnology two years ago as a process manager in customer projects. As senior scientist, today he is in­volved in technology projects and process design for the production for biologics. Before entering the pharmaceutical area he was awarded by In­novationsfonden and held an industrial PostDoc position for both the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability and VitaLys I/S in Denmark. He studied biology at the University of Ulm, Germany and obtained his PhD at the Institute of Microbiology and Biotechnology on bio-based production of chemical building blocks and biofuels.

Dr. Julia Neugebauer currently holds the position of Associate Director and Leader Discovery Programs at the MorphoSys AG, where she heads a team re­sponsible for antibody discovery projects including target validation, antibody selections, functional characterization and engineering up to lead selection. Prior to that position Julia Neugebauer worked at MorphoSys as Project Team Leader for Customer Projects. Altogether she has 10 years of experience in the field of antibody discovery and engineering. Julia Neugebauer studied biochemistry at the University of Regensburg and at the New York University and earned a PhD from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

Since joining the company’s protein science dept. of Immunocore Ltd in 2014, Dr. Ronan O’Dwyer has focussed on the affinity maturation of engineered T cell receptors for use in the company’s ImmTAC platform. Previously he worked in Antibody discovery, primarily on shark single domain Antibodies at both Pfizer and Ossianix respectively.

Since January 2015, Dr. Zhukovsky is the chief scientific officer of Biomunex Pharmaceuticals, where he is developing BiXAb® bispecific Antibodies for immune-oncology. He has over two decades of professional experience in the field of biotherapeutics research and development. Before joining Biomunex, he served as the CSO of Affimed Therapeutics; there he was responsible for the advancement of candidate therapeutics from discovery to the clinic and novel technology development. Prior to that he was a senior research fellow in the biotherapeutics department at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. leading Antibody discovery efforts. Prior to that, Dr. Zhukovsky was an Associate Director at Xencor, Inc. where he led translational research efforts resulting in several clinical candidates for hematological malignancies. Dr. Zhukovsky began his professional career employing phage display technology at Neurex Corporation before moving to Lynx Therapeutics (now Illumina, Inc.) to work on the development of genomics technologies. Dr. Zhukovsky performed a postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech, Inc. He received a PhD in biochemistry from Brandeis University.

Dr. Manuela Duerr has spent a decade in preclinical and early clinical devel­opment of Antibody based therapeutics. She worked both on novel as well as biosimilar compounds. Manuela currently serves as a project leader for Pieris` Immuno-Oncology Program PRS-343. Prior to joining Pieris, Manuela was a preclinical development manager at Sandoz Biopharmaceuticals where she was responsible for the preclinical development and clinical Phase I/III biomarker strategy of two biosimilar drug candidates. Manuela received her PhD in microbiology/immunology from the University of Tuebingen, Germany, following which she worked as a senior scientist in preclinical development at Morphosys moving a fully human anti-GM-CSF antibody into the clinics. Manu­ela has published her research in several international peer review journals.

Dr. Lucia D’Amico graduated in 2013 at the University of Torino, Italy, studying molecular medicine, specialisation in immunology and cellular biology. After completing PhD, Dr. Lucia D’Amico moved to USA as a post doc research as­sociate in Roberta Faccio lab at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Lucia D’Amico’s research focused on the new role of Dickkopf-related protein 1 (Dkk1) in the regulation of myeloid derived suppressor cells expansion and function in cancer. For this study she received the Young In­vestigator Award from the American Society in Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR-Seattle 2015). After completing he PhD training she moved to the University Hospital of Basel, Switzerland, as Project leader in laboratory of cancer immunology of Prof. Alfred Zippelius. Here Dr. Lucia D’Amico currently is working on ADCs as promising anti-cancer therapeutics.

Dr Lauren Ely is a principal scientist at Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic In­novation (CTI) in San Francisco, USA. Lauren joined the protein technology group at CTI in 2011 where she has been leading the protein engineering efforts on several drug discovery programs, working in collaboration with academic investigators and Pfizer colleagues to co-develop bio-therapeutics. Prior to joining CTI, Lauren was a post-doctoral fellow in the departments of structural biology, and molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford Univer­sity. Lauren completed her doctoral studies in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at Monash University in Melbourne Australia, and holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons) from The University of Melbourne.

Mark Chiu is leading the biologics engineering & function group in Janssen Biotherapeutics. He has a biophysics BA from University of California Berke­ley, Biochemistry Ph.D. from University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign. He has worked at Seton Hall University as a professor of chemistry and as a re­search investigator at Abbott Labs. While applying structure-function studies to optimise biotherapeutics, he actively pursues characterisations of marine and aquatic invertebrates.

Dr Matthew Beard is a project leader, with Ipsen Bioinnovation Ltd, develop­ing new protein drugs from project initiation through to early clinical trials. His role includes delivering new drugs into the pipeline while providing excel­lence in leadership and science. His scientific background lies in recombinant proteins, molecular and cell biology, protein traffic, bacterial neurotoxins and cell signalling. Before joining Ipsen Matthew worked in Biotech, completed academic post-doctoral research in Professor James E Rothman’s laboratory at Columbia University and in Professor Graham Warren’s laboratory at Yale Cell Biology, and completed PhD research in Professor Miles Houslay’s labora­tory at the University of Glasgow.

Dr. Malathi Raman has been the european cloning and protein product man­ager at Takara Bio Europe since 2011, and manages Takara’s entire cloning and protein product range including the innovative In-Fusion® HD Cloning and Capturem™ protein and Antibody purification technologies. Prior to join­ing Takara, Dr Raman worked as a post-doctoral research fellow for 3 years, within the group of Professor Terry Rabbitts, at the Leeds Institute of Mo­lecular Medicine in Leeds, United Kingdom, identifying novel protein-protein interactions involved in the pathogenesis of prostate cancer and Ewing’s sar­coma. The aim was to identify cancer-specific interactions that could then be therapeutically targeted by single-domain intracellular Antibody fragments or small molecule inhibitors. Dr Raman obtained her PhD in cardiac genetics from Imperial College London, United Kingdom, in 2008, and her thesis in­volved identifying transcription factors present in cardiac muscle that bind to a critical CACC/Sp element within the human cardiac troponin I (hTnIc) gene and further characterising their function in regulating this gene.