Advanced Therapies Week 2023

Rupa is the Sr. Director of Technical Affairs for Advanced Therapies at Thermo Fisher Scientific. The Office of Technical Affairs comprises scientific experts that serve as a strategic, innovational and educational leaders in the area of cell-based therapies, plasmids and mRNA therapeutics.

In her prior role as the Director of Enterprise Science and Innovation Partnerships, she developed and managed strategic partnerships with global BioPharma, Biotech and Healthcare customers in the area of Cell and Gene Therapy.

She has over 15 years of expertise in GMP manufacturing and has successfully led GMP operations, Process Development and MSAT activities, infrastructure buildout, customer relations and business development. In her past roles, she has been the Director of Cell Manufacturing for Program for Advanced Cell Therapy- UW Hospitals and Clinics.

Øystein’s professional experience is derived from different leadership positions in R&D, Product Management and Business for over 22 years in Thermo Fisher Scientific, he is responsible for development and commercialization of products and services for the cell therapy market. His scientific training is in the field of molecular cell biology and he received a PhD from the University of Oslo.

Øystein’s academic career focused on the study of physiological & molecular mechanisms of tumor cell growth and the development of novel therapies for the treatment of solid tumors in collaboration with Norsk Hydro.

Xavier de Mollerat du Jeu, Ph.D. is the Senior Director of Research and Development of the Cell and Gene Therapy business unit at Thermo Fisher Scientific, first joining the company in 2005. His team is currently responsible for integrating new closed modular platforms into cell therapy production workflows.

In his prior role, Xavier and his team developed cell therapy processing platforms and identified new DNA delivery approaches for hard to transfect cell lines and primary/stem cells—inventing Lipofectamine® 3000 and authoring several patents around nucleic acid delivery in the process. Xavier studied molecular biology and plant physiology at the University of Montpellier II in France and received his Ph.D. in human genetics in 2003 from Clemson University in South Carolina. His thesis work involved identifying the gene(s) responsible for Split Hand/Split Foot Malformation 3 (SHFM 3). His post-doctoral fellowship research was in the laboratory of Dr. Michael G. Rosenfeld at UCSD, where he studied the roles of microRNAs in pituitary gland development.

Justin is the Vice President of Technical Operations at Caribou Biosciences which is a leading clinical-stage CRISPR genome-editing biopharmaceutical company advancing a pipeline of off-the-shelf CAR-T and CAR-NK cell therapies for the treatment of patients with hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. He is responsible for developing, manufacturing, and distributing the company’s critical raw materials and clinical trial materials. Prior to Caribou, Justin was Chief Development Officer at Actym Therapeutics, and served in various positions of increasing responsibility in immuno-oncology and vaccine development at Cerus Corporation, Anza Therapeutics, and Aduro Biotech. Justin has authored over 12 publications in peer-reviewed journals and is an inventor on U.S. and foreign patents and patent applications. Justin earned his undergraduate degree in Biology from Vassar College, his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and did his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.