Dr. Dixit conducted extensive graduate and post-graduate training in toxicology–biochemistry with both Indian and US Institutions and is board certified in toxicology from the American Board of Toxicology, Inc. since 1992. In December 1992, Rakesh joined the Department of Safety Assessment, Merck and Co., Inc in West Point, PA where he served in various management positions. During his roughly 14-year period with Merck, Rakesh contributed to the successful filings of many blockbuster drugs. For about a year, Rakesh was associated with Johnson and Johnson PRD, La Jolla/Alza as senior director of toxicology. In Aug 2006, Rakesh joined MedImmune, Inc. (an AstraZeneca Biologics company) to lead Global Biologics Safety Assessment, Experimental Pathology, and Laboratory Animal Medicine. In his current position, Rakesh is responsible for providing guidance on research and development of biological products; including nonclinical toxicology/safety support for all AstraZeneca- MedImmune biologics products, including monoclonal antibodies and vaccines. Rakesh has published more than 60 papers in renowned international journals and has given over 100 invited lectures/presentations/workshops in national and international meetings.

Dr. Howard is a founding scientist and chief scientific officer at Spirogen. He has been conducting research in the pyrrolobenzodiazepine (PBD) family of antitumor antibiotics for twenty years in both academia and industry. Philip has worked as a part of a multi-disciplinary team, supported by Cancer Research UK and Spirogen, on the synthesis, biological evaluation, and development of the PBD dimers. Since 2008, he has been working on the development of the PBDs as payloads for antibody-drug conjugate therapy with a number of leading companies including, Seattle Genetics, Stemcentrx, ADC Therapeutics, Genentech, Regeneron, and Tanabe Research Laboratories USA Inc. Dr Howard designed the tesirine payload (SG3249) and the warhead SG3132 released by the talirine payload. His work at MedImmune is focused on the further development of their PBD-ADC platform. At the time of writing, more than 23 PBD-ADCs, arising from Spirogen collaborations, have been submitted to clinicaltrials.gov for 11 targets.

Since August 2012, Patrick van Berkel is the senior vice president of research & development for ADC Therapeutics sarl. Between 2003 and 2012, Patrick worked for Genmab BV, where he had various positions with increasing scientific and management responsibilities in the area of antibody engineering and antibody manufacturing. From 2001 to 2003, Patrick worked for Crucell as a senior scientist of antibody technology. Patrick worked from 1996 to 2001 for Pharming as a protein chemistry scientist. In 1996, Patrick obtained his PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands.

Madan Katragadda is currently an associate research fellow in Biomedicine Design group located in Cambridge, MA. His work is primarily focused on antibody discovery and engineering as applied to different therapeutic modalities such as antibody-drug conjugates, T-cell retargeting bispecifics, and multi-specifics for combinatorial targeting. He has led several biologics projects to the preclinical stage and currently has a peptide-based complement inhibitor that he developed during his postdoc days in Phase II clinical trials to treat PNH and dry AMD.

Dr. Dorywalska received her B.Sc. in biology and chemistry from York University in Canada. She completed her Ph.D. at Stanford University, where she studied conformational dynamics of ribosomal complexes during protein synthesis using single molecule FRET. Later, in collaboration with Dr. Steven Chu at Stanford, she examined the molecular forces within the translating ribosome using optical tweezers. In 2010, she joined the Protein Engineering group at Rinat-Pfizer where she developed and implemented enzymatic conjugation methods, and investigated the molecular properties that define the stability and efficacy of site-specific ADCs.

Hans-Georg Lerchen is a chief scientist in drug discovery for Bayer AG, Pharmaceuticals Division. With a 29-year background in medicinal chemistry, he is an author and co-author of 75 patents or patent applications and 17 publications. His current research focus is drug delivery systems, prodrugs, and antibody drug conjugates.

After completing a PhD in immunogenetics at the University of Cambridge in 2000 (Babraham Institute), Andrea obtained a postdoctoral fellow position, focusing on the identification and characterisation of genes that contributes to diabetes type I susceptibility at the JDRF/WT Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory, CIMR (Cambridge Institute of Medical Research), Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK. In 2007, Andrea joined the technology department at Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) that later became MedImmune. For 10 years, Andrea has been working in phenotypic screening, covering novel target discovery, protein engineering, and novel therapeutic platforms in the Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering Department at MedImmune.

Dr. Ling Xu obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she was trained as an enzymologist. She has over 15 years’ experience with mass spectrometry application in the areas of characterisation and quantification of both small and large molecules.

She worked as a senior research associate at a proteomic mass spectrometry central lab at University of Toronto for five years. She has been working at Millennium Pharmaceutical for over nine years with a focus on bioanalysis of small molecules and antibody drug conjugates. Before that, she did research at Brigham Woman Hospital /Harvard School of Medicine for around a year as a research associate on structural elucidation of bioactive small molecules that activate the resolution of acute inflammation. Dr. Ling Xu joined Mersana Therapeutics, Inc. in 2017.

Laurent Ducry (born 1971) studied chemistry at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). He obtained his Ph.D. from ETH Zürich (Switzerland) with Prof. F. Diederich in 1998. He then held a Swiss National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia with Prof. A. B. Smith, III and Prof. R. Hirschmann. He began his industrial career in R&D at Lonza in Visp (Switzerland) in 2000. In 2008, he became group leader of the antibody-drug conjugates R&D team. He is the editor of ‘Antibody- Drug Conjugates: Methods and Protocols’ (Springer, Humana Press, 2013). Since 2016, he is head of bioconjugates business development at Lonza.

Floris van Delft is the co-founder and CSO of SynAffix. Before that, he was associate professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen (2000- 2012), with a focus on the development of click chemistry and protein conjugation technologies. Earlier appointments involved an assistant professorship at the University of Amsterdam (1998-1999) and a postdoctoral research position at the Scripps Research Institute (San Diego, USA, 1996-1997). Floris received his MSc and PhD (cum laude) from Leiden University (the Netherlands, 1996) in carbohydrate chemistry and stereoselective synthesis. He has authored over 140 peer-reviewed publications, 14 patents, and in 2015 he was appointed special professor of bioconjugate chemistry at Wageningen University (the Netherlands).

Yelena Kovtun, an associate director at ImmunoGen, Inc., is currently leading the corporate research program focused on the discovery and development of new antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) therapies for haematological malignancies. She led research programs at ImmunoGen, Inc. (Waltham, MA, 2002-present) and Cereon Genomics, Monsanto (Cambridge, MA, 2000-2002) following completion of her post-doctorate at Harvard Medical School.

Sharon McGonigle is a senior principal scientist at Eisai Inc., where she leads pre-clinical biology in discovery and early development programs for oncology. Her 10-year tenure at Eisai spans target validation and mechanism of action activities in early discovery, IND-enabling studies, guidance and support of preclinical programs through clinical introduction, and biomarker and translational studies. Prior to Eisai, she worked at two start-up biotechnology companies in the Boston area in similar roles. She held post-doctoral positions at MUSC (Charleston, SC) and Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) and she completed her PhD in Dublin, Ireland.

Laura holds a PhD in protein biochemistry and was trained as a postdoc at University of Heidelberg, Germany. She has 10 years of experience in biochemical and biophysical protein characterization. She joined Novasep’s Bioconjugation Unit (Le Mans, France) in April 2017 as an analytical scientist, where she is in charge of analytical development for ADC characterization at the interface between R&D and QC.

Ulf Grawunder is the CEO of NBE-Therapeutics, a Swiss Biotech company that he founded in 2012, which focuses on the development of “next-generation” antibody drug conjugates for cancer therapy. Prior to that, Ulf had co-founded 4-Antibody in 2004, a Swiss therapeutic antibody engineering company, where he initially served as CEO and later as CSO, until the company was sold to US-based Agenus. Ulf is a biochemist who did his PhD in the area of B cell immunology at the Basel Institute for Immunology. After this he did several years of post-doctoral research at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. After that he returned to Europe to continue research as principal investigator at the Basel Institute for Immunology, and the University of Basel, Switzerland, before he started his first biotech company, 4-Antibody. Ulf also holds a diploma in technology entrepreneurship from the University St. Gallen, School of Business, Switzerland (HSG, Hochschule St. Gallen), and he is part if the teaching faculty of the European Centre for Pharmaceutical Medicine (ECPM) at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Ulf is an advisor of a number of national and international organisations, including the scientific advisory board of the Bavarian Immunotherapies Network, BayImmuNet, Germany, the jury of Venturekick, Switzerland, and the Board of the Swiss Biotech Association.

Mr. Babcook has served as the senior vice president of discovery research since March 2016 and is responsible for target, antibody and drug conjugate discovery, and associated partnerships. For over 20 years, Mr. Babcook has made significant contributions to the international biopharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Zymeworks Inc., based on a novel antibody generation platform, he co-founded ImmGenics Pharmaceuticals Inc. in November 1998 which was acquired by Abgenix Inc. in 2000 and subsequently by Amgen, Inc. in 2006 where he led its Canadian research team from 2006 to 2010. Mr. Babcook also established the Biologics Division at the Centre for Drug Research and Development where he served as vice president of biologics from August 2011 to March 2016, in addition to becoming the founding president and chief scientific officer of Kairos in January 2015. While at Kairos, he was responsible for the development of its ADC therapeutics pipeline and formed multiple collaborations, including the strategic partnership and the merger with Zymeworks Inc. in March 2016. Mr. Babcook has participated in the development of more than 100 therapeutic antibody-based programs, 11 of which are in the clinic, including three ADCs. Mr. Babcook is an adjunct professor in molecular biology and biochemistry at Simon Fraser University, an honorary doctorate recipient from the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and the recipient of the LifeSciences British Columbia’s “Innovation and Achievement” Award.

Alex Schammel is a senior scientist II in chemistry at Abbvie Stemcentrx, where he works on the synthesis of linker drugs for antibody drug conjugates. Alex joined Stemcentrx in 2016 after working as a medicinal chemist at Sirenas Marine Discovery from 2014–2016. He conducted his postdoctoral studies at The Scripps Research Institute under the guidance of Prof. Dale Boger. Alex received his Ph.D. at UCLA in 2012 under the mentorship of Prof. Neil Garg where he worked on the synthesis of complex natural products.

Dr. Frank Hanakam has over 20 years’ experience in the development and production of biopharmaceuticals. He holds a PhD in biology from the University of Tübingen/Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried (Munich), Germany and received his MBA from the Open University Business School in Milton Keynes, UK.

His professional career started in 1996 at Micromet AG where he held several positions in the field of Biopharma (R&D, Process Development, Production & Clinical Supply) and was vice president, process development at Micromet, Munich, Germany. From 2007-2008, Dr. Hanakam was vice president, biotech development at Synthon, a generics company in the Netherlands, where he was in charge of the establishment of all biotech activities required for the development and production of biosimilars. His work involved the development of new and innovative processes as basis for cost-effective manufacturing, as well as the establishment of state-of-the-art analytics for in-depth process and product characterization. In 2008, he founded “Hanakam-Consulting”, working as a freelance consultant to the biopharmaceutical industry in close collaboration with well-established consulting agencies, e.g. Granzer Regulatory Consulting & Services. Until today he covered multiple projects from early process development to supply of material for clinical trials and market, process scale-up and comparability exercises, validation of analytical methods, process validation, and generation of documentation for IND/IMPD/CTD for BLA&MAA submission including many Phase 1-3 antibody projects and various other recombinant proteins, molecules and formats, and ATMPs.

Throughout his career, he has been involved in process development of more than 50 different biopharmaceuticals. Moreover, he has given numerous international lectures on the subject of biopharmaceutical process development, manufacturing and analytics, and biosimilars. Moreover, he has given numerous international lectures on the subject of biopharmaceutical process development, manufacturing and analytics, including biosimilars.

Dr. Kai Wilkens completed his biology studies and PhD thesis in molecular biology in Bochum working in the field of gene expression Control. He did clinical research for a couple of years and held different positions in several life science companies pioneering innovative technologies and mainly enabling new approaches in translational and clinical research. These included MWG Biotech, Panomics/Affymetrix, Mesoscale Discovery, and Advanced Cell Diagnostics.