Dr. Ben Shen is currently a principal scientist and head of the biotherapeutic ADME Group within preclinical and translational PKPD (PTPK) department of Genentech. He received his medical degree from Nanjing Medical University in 1983 and a master’s degree from Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in 1987 followed by conducting his joint postdoctoral training at UCSF and Genentech from 1989-1993. He then worked at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Insti­tute (CHORI) as a research biochemist for three years.

Ben joined the PKPD department of Genentech in 1996. During his tenure, Ben has taken on increasing responsibilities and played a seminal role in un­derstanding the disposition and pharmacokinetics of protein therapeutics. His lab is accountable for all the mechanistic work and ADME characterisation of ADCs, providing support for molecules that show atypical PK behavior, and driving the basic research in the field of ADME/PKPD of all biotherapeutics. He has made significant contributions to the product portfolio and the PKPD sci­ence. Ben contributed to more than 50 projects that spanned across different therapeutics areas, different stages of drug development (ESR, ED, IND, clinical development, post-marketing), different types of molecules such as mAbs, fu­sion proteins, Fab’2, cytokines, peptides, ADCs, small molecules and answered a broad range of questions that address MOA, mechanism of toxicity, regulatory requests, formulation issues, atypical PK, non-clinical or clinical development, molecule design and selection. He has published over 50 research papers with more than 20 as first/senior author and received four US patents. He has been regularly invited to present at national and international conferences and serves as ad hoc manuscript reviewer for bioconjugate chemistry, PNAS, molecular pharmaceutics, mAbs and other journals. Ben has received numerous recogni­tions and awards including 2015 World ADC Award for Best Publication, Nature Biotech-paper with biggest impact on life sciences in last 20 years (2015) and Roche Recognitions for significant contribution to project development, among others. He is a member of AACR, AAPS and several other scientific societies.

Tami Wu is the director of quality control at Seattle Genetics. She is CMC lead for early phase ADC program and has been QC lead for multiple ADC programs in Seattle Genetics. Her department is responsible for ADC release and stability testing, method transfer and validation, analytical method lifecycle manage­ment as well as developing and managing specifications for biological and small molecule products from Phase I to commercial stages.

Jeremy Parker obtained a bachelor’s of science in chemistry from Imperial College, University of London in 1994, then moved to the University of Oxford, completing a DPhil investigating biomimetic Diels-Alder reactions with Professor Sir J. E. Baldwin. After a brief period with Laporte Fine Chemicals in Southampton, he joined Astra­Zeneca in 1999. He has held numerous roles in process chemistry, analytical chem­istry and external sourcing including team manager roles within process chemistry and analytical chemistry. He is currently AstraZeneca’s principal scientist for new modalities and tissue targeting, leading the chemistry activities on the development and commercialisation of a range of new therapeutic modalities including antibody drug conjugates, dendrimer drug conjugates and polymer drug conjugates. His in­terests include contemporary synthetic methodology, route selection, linker chem­istry and the synthesis of a wide range of new therapeutic modalities.

Professor Andreas Pahl has 25 years’ experience in research and teaching and excellent expertise in biochemistry, pharmacology and toxicology. In 2008, he joined industry to pursue drug development for inflammatory and autoimmune diseases at Nycomed and Takeda. In 2012, he joined Heidelberg Pharma as the CSO extending his expertise to the area of oncology and antibody drug conjugates. Since 2016, he has also been CSO of Wilex AG, the mother firm of Heidelberg Pharma. Recently, Wilex AG was renamed to Heidelberg Pharma AG. Andreas continues to be adjunct professor for pharmacology and toxicology.

Dr. Mariya Pavlyuk joined the Institute of Research Pierre Fabre in January 2017 and is Pierre Fabre’s global oncology and onco-immunology expert. Prior to that, she held various positions, including global clinical development director at Servier company, clinical oncology expert at Roche, etc. She has contributed to the clinical development of monoclonal antibodies, bi-specific antibodies and ADCs in immune-oncology and to the research and development of different conjugated constructions. To date, she leads the numerous targeted biotherapy research and development programs at the Institute of Research Pierre Fabre.

In his role as senior director of CMC operations, Christian Cimander is leading the early stage CMC development team at Genmab. Together with his team, Christian is responsible for managing the CMC development of Genmab’s anti­body programs from DNA to FIH supply.

Christian has almost 20 years of experience within the biotech industry. During his 11 years at Genmab, he has worked within CMC development for many of Genmab’s program covering very early stage through multiple BLA programs as e.g. Genmab’s daratumumab (Darzalex) program. Christian is a biochemical engineer by training and holds a PhD in biotechnology. Christian lives together with his wife and two children in Malmö, Sweden.

Christian Lanshoeft is currently working as head of laboratory in the biotrans­formation group at Novartis Pharma AG Basel (Switzerland). He holds a PhD degree in analytical chemistry from the University of Strasbourg (France). His industrial thesis focussed on “Generic mass spectrometric workflows for mAb-related therapeutic protein quantification in pre-clinical species” under the su­pervision of Dr. Sarah Cianférani (University of Strasbourg) and Dr. Olivier Heudi (Novartis). Prior to his PhD thesis, he obtained a master’s (and also a bach­elor’s) degree in molecular life sciences from the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, where he studied the “High-throughput quantitative analysis of small molecules in clinical samples using LDTD-APCI-MS/MS” under the supervision of Prof. Götz Schlotterbeck.

Yelena Kovtun, an associate director at ImmunoGen, Inc., is currently leading the corporate research program focussed on the discovery and development of new antibody drug conjugate therapies for hematological malignancies. She led research programs at ImmunoGen, Inc. (Waltham, MA, 2002-present) and Cereon Genomics-Monsanto (Cambridge, MA, 2000-02) following comple­tion of her post-doctorate at Harvard Medical School

David Lee is a senior director at Mersana Therapeutics, where he leads the analytical chemistry department in support of platform technology and pipe­line advancement, CMC-related analytical development and DMPK. He has 20 years of experience with analytical method development and characterisation of proteins, antibodies and ADCs, bioconjugation and laboratory management in academia and industry.

Dr. Mary Chaohong Hu is currently CEO of Shanghai Miracogen Inc. She re­ceived her bachelor’s of science in biochemistry from Wuhan University and her PhD in molecular biology from the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China. She completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

She has over 17 years of experience working in the biopharmaceutical/bio­tech industry in the US. Before moving to China, she was director of bioas­say development and process analytics at Seattle Genetics for development of monoclonal antibodies and antibody drug conjugates. Prior to joining Seattle Genetics, she was director of molecular biology and clinical immunology at GSK/ID Biomedical Corporation and was responsible for preclinical and clinical development of infectious disease vaccines.

Dr. Chantal Bullot has over 25 years’ experience in regulatory CMC in the phar­maceutical industry occupying regional and global roles both for development and licensed biological products.

Dr. Jinming Gu obtained his PhD degree in molecular biology from Vanderbilt University. He then joined Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School for postdoctoral training in oncology. Jinming started his industry career at Merrimack Pharmaceutical, Inc., where he worked on MM111, a bispecific antibody later moved into clinical trials. He then joined Abbott Laboratories. Since joining Abbott/Abbvie, he has been leading/working on multiple mAb, ADC and bispecific antibody programs, including ABT-806, ABT-414, ABT-165 and ABBV642, etc. Jinming then became the executive director of biologics discovery at Shanghai Hengrui Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., a leading innovative pharmaceutical company in China, where he established a world-class anti­body discovery platform including automated human naïve antibody phage display screening platform and a yeast display antibody optimisation platform in addition to delivering multiple next generation antibody-based therapeutic candidates (including ADC, bsAb and mAb) into preclinical development. He is currently the VP of biologics discovery at QiLu (Shanghai) Innovation Center.

Dr. Robert Sussman is currently the managing director of SafeBridge Consul­tants, Inc. He has over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry where he has worked in various capacities in corporate occupational toxicology groups for Warner-Lambert and Pfizer. Bob has an undergraduate degree in bioenvironmental engineering from Brown University and a PhD in environmen­tal health science from New York University. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology, a past chair of the AIHA’s WEEL Committee and a founding member of the Occupational Toxicology Roundtable. He also has an adjunct appointment at the New York University Medical Center.

Roberto Castangia works at Biopharma as the global head of business develop­ment and innovation. He previously worked at Shimadzu Corporation as global sales manager in the analytical instrument division, providing worldwide sup­port in R&D, business development and marketing.

He graduated in pharmaceutical chemistry and technology in Italy, investigating novel approaches in the synthesis of natural molecules with biological activity, then worked extensively in drug formulation and delivery in both CNRS (France) and Max Planck Institute (Germany) designing new drug carriers. These studies were followed by his PhD in chemical biology at The University Manchester and a postdoctorate at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB). Roberto’s research and publications span across several chemistries involving applications for pharma, biotechnology and material science.

Prior to Synaffix, Sander van Berkel performed postdoctoral research on novel conjugation methodologies for non-invasive cancer imaging at the University of Ox­ford. Preceding Oxford, he worked at the Leibniz-Institute of Plant Biochemistry in Halle, Germany, as postdoctoral researcher focussing on the synthesis of antitumor agent epothilone B and its derivatives. He holds a PhD and a master’s in organic chemistry from the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is an inventor on multiple patents and has been the author of 40 peer-reviewed publications and reviews.