SPEAKERS AND CHAIRS OF THE 2024 WORKSHOP

MATHIAS UHLEN

Mathias Uhlén’s research is focused on protein science, antibody engineering and precision medicine, and has resulted in more than 750 publications. His group was the first to describe a number of innovations including: (1) affinity-based protein engineering leading to many life science applications, exemplified by protein A, affibodies and affinity fusion proteins, (2) the concept of sequencing by synthesis, a technology now used in all major “next generation sequencing” systems, and (3) the Human Protein Atlas program creating an open access resource with data for all the human proteins in cells, tissues, and organs harboring more than 5 million web pages and 10 million high-resolution microscope images.

IAN WILSON

Professor Ian Wilson (DPhil, DSc, FRS, FRSE) obtained a B.Sc. from Edinburgh University (1971), D. Phil. (1976) and D.Sc. (2000) from Oxford University. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in 1977. In 1982, he joined Scripps Research Institute as a faculty member where he is currently Hansen Professor of Structural Biology and Chair, Dept. of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology. His research has centered on how the immune system combats microbial pathogens through structural and biophysical characterization of a variety of antigen recognition receptors in innate and adaptive immunity. His lab’s current focus is on how influenza virus, HIV-1, HCV, SARS-CoV-2, and P. falciparum are recognized by broadly neutralizing or protective antibodies to identify vulnerable sites and to aid in design of novel vaccines and therapeutics. He has authored over 875 papers, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and International Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

BERND BODENMILLER
 

Bernd Bodenmiller is a quantitative biologist who develops novel experimental and computational approaches for the quantitative analysis of tumor ecosystems to improve  understanding of mechanisms of tumor development for the benefit of patients. He is the founding director of the Dept. of Quantitative Biomedicine (DQBM) at Zurich University (UZH), which fosters research and education at the interface of biomedical research, biotechnology and computational biology, to guide development of next-generation precision medicine. He obtained his PhD in the group of Ruedi Aebersold at ETH Zürich. For his postdoctoral training, he joined the lab of Garry Nolan at Stanford University. In 2012, he became a group leader and in 2013 an SNF/ERC assistant professor at the UZH. In 2019, he was tenured and became the founding director of the DQBM. In October 2020 he was appointed Dual Professor for Quantitative Biomedicine at the UZH and at ETH Zurich. His group has pioneered the development of imaging mass cytometry, an approach enabling simultaneously imaging of over 40 proteins and transcripts in tumor tissues (Nat. Meth. 2014; Cell Systems, 2017; Nature 2020) and the histoCAT software toolbox (Nat. Meth., 2017). His group applies these methods to unravel how cells in the tumor ecosystem drive cancer development to identify mechanisms that might be exploited for therapeutic targeting (Nat. Biotechnology, 2017, Cell, 2017; Cell, 2019).

THOMAS MOEHRING
 

Dr. Thomas Moehring is an Analytical Chemist by education. After several years with BioVisioN where the focus was on the discovery and development of peptide biomarkers for diagnosis of human diseases like Alzheimer’s, he joined Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2004.  Key motivation as part of his various roles in Product Management was and is to drive innovative technological developments in the area of  mass spectrometry and its application to the field of (Prote-)Omics to get to a better understanding of complex biological systems. He is now leading the OMICS Application team as a part of the Life Science Mass Spectrometry business unit and is the Managing Director of the Bremen site.

ANDREW BRADBURY

Andrew Bradbury is the Chief Scientific Officer of Specifica, (www.specifica.bio), a start-up founded in 2016 to sell unique client specific antibody libraries, and acquired by Q² Lab Solutions in 2022. He has worked in the field of phage display and antibody engineering for over 30 years, receiving his Ph.D. at Cambridge University in the MRC under Cesar Milstein, then carrying out research at the CNR Rome and SISSA in Trieste, before moving to the Los Alamos National Lab in 1999, where he became a group leader in 2010.  He left LANL for Specifica in 2017. He was a founder member and the first president (2007-2010) of The Antibody Society, a professional society for all aspects of antibodies. He has published over 170 peer-reviewed articles, including reviews and perspectives on phage display and antibody engineering. His present research interests lie in developing novel antibody library formats and selection and characterization methods.

JACOB GLANVILLE

Jacob Glanville is a computational immune-engineer and entrepreneur. Founder & CEO of Centivax. Co-Founder & CEO of Distributed Bio. Principal Scientist at Pfizer/rinat. UC Berkeley MCB BA in Thomson HLA Population Genetics laboratory and Sjolandar Berkeley Phylogenomics Group. Stanford PhD with Davis T-cell laboratory. Affiliate professor at USAC. Advisory board member of USF Biotechnology program. Publications include seminal methods in repertoire analysis, computationally guided library engineering, vaccine science and bnAb engineering. Completed 78 antibody discovery programs across 60 biotech and pharmaceutical groups, and developed discovery technologies at Pfizer, Twist, Isogenica, AbCheck, Distributed Bio and Charles River Laboratories. Pandemic pundit.

VICTOR GREIFF

Victor Greiff is an Associate Professor at the University of Oslo (Department of Immunology) since January 2018. His group develops machine learning, computational and experimental tools to decipher, read, predict and re-engineer antibody and T-cell repertoires with the aim to develop fundamentally novel immunodiagnostics, vaccines and immunotherapeutics. He performed his postdoctoral research at ETH Zürich in the laboratory of Sai T. Reddy.

JÖRG HOHEISEL

Jörg Hoheisel heads the Division of Functional Genome Analysis at the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ; German Cancer Research Center) in Heidelberg, Germany. His research objective is the development and immediate application of technologies for an assessment and description of the realisation and regulation of cellular function from genetic information. He currently has a particular focus on the analysis of protein variations and interactions by means of affinity proteomics. Another line of work is Synthetic Biology for the in vitro production of functional biomolecules and the establishment of artificial molecular systems. Earlier achievements were his involvement in the sequencing of the yeast genome as a coordinator and developments in the area of microarray technology. Jörg has also co-founded four companies; another five were formed independently by former group members.

GORDANA WOZNIAK-KNOPP

Dr. Gordana Wozniak-Knopp received her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the Medical University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. In her post-doctoral studies at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, she became acquainted with display library methods and alternative scaffolds for antigen recognition.  She actively participated in the development of Fcab technology, which is based on the introduction of a novel antigen binding site into an Fc fragment scaffold and its implementation as a part of bispecific antibodies, and is one of the co-founders of F-star, today a clinical-stage company. She holds several patents and patent applications from the field of antibody engineering. Since 2016, she heads the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Innovative Immunotherapeutics at BOKU, Vienna.

 ULF LANDEGREN

Ulf Landegren MD PhD is professor of molecular medicine in Uppsala, Sweden, developing molecular tools such as padlock probes and proximity ligation assays. He is member of EMBO and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and of several academic and industrial boards and advisory boards. He has authored 230 peer-reviewed publications, and some 50 patents or applications. His lab has given rise to 12 spin-out companies with a combined staff of more than 900 people, including the publicly traded Olink Proteomics. Technologies from his lab have also been licensed to many leading international biotech and diagnostic companies.

ANDREAS PLÜCKTHUN

Andreas Plückthun is Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Zürich. His research is centered on protein engineering. His contributions have included many aspects of antibody engineering, development of novel scaffolds (DARPins and Armadillo Repeat Proteins), engineering of stable G-protein coupled receptors for structural studies, and the development of Shielded Retargeted Adenovirus (SHREAD) for precision gene delivery. He and his team have developed several technologies for directed evolution, such as ribosome display, and cell-based systems for stable GPCRs. His lab is very interdisciplinary, combining computer-aided protein design, structural and biophysical studies, to work in model animals. He is a member of the German Academy of Science (Leopoldina) and EMBO. His work has been published in over 500 papers, which have been cited over 57,000 times (h-index 132). He has receive numerous prizes, including the 2016 Christian Anfinsen Award for "pioneering contributions to protein engineering". He co-founded MorphoSys AG in Martinsried (1992), Molecular Partners AG in Zurich (2004), G7 Therapeutics in Zurich (2014) (divested to Heptares/Sosei) and Vector BioPharma in Basel (2021). 

MICHAEL WEINER

Michael P. Weiner, Ph.D. obtained his graduate training at Penn State Univ. and Cornell Univ. He was the first to clone and sequence the methylation enzyme of the BamHI restriction endonuclease. His post-doctoral training was in the Dept of Physical Chemistry at Cornell, where he investigated the in vitro folding behavior of RNaseA and prethrombin. Major scientific accomplishments include inventing and commercializing: (i) Quikchange site-directed mutagenesis (Stratagene), (ii) Next generation DNA sequencing and emulsion PCR (454 Life Sciences), and (iii) DNA barcoded Luminex bead-based genotyping (GSK). Other inventions include: (i) digital PCR (Raindance), (ii) biopanning using emulsions (Affomix), (iii) emulsion-based DNA sequencing (GnuBio), and (iv) FAC sorting virus particles (AxioMx). He has co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles, over 50 U.S. patents and patent applications, and edited 3 books. A serial scientific entrepreneur he has either founded or been one of the first scientists at RainDance Technologies, 454 Life Sciences, Affomix, AxioMx, GnuBio, Encodia and Abbratech.  Dr Weiner has received the Connecticut Entrepreneur of the year award (2016) and the Citetab Lifetime Achievement award (2019). 

AMER-DENIS AKKAD
 

Amer-Denis Akkad is the Head of Translational Research at Absci, a data-first generative AI drug creation company that combines AI with scalable wet lab technologies to create better biologics for patients, faster. He is a biochemist by training and received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the IGSN in Bochum. After his additional training as a clinical laboratory geneticist, he joined Bayer AG as a drug hunter covering the value chain from early target ID to pre-clinical candidate stage. During this time, he spent 4 years at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard building up and leveraging the Precision Cardiology Laboratory initiative for high-resolution single sequencing to broaden the understanding of underlying disease mechanisms and to facilitate the development of new therapeutic interventions. In his current role he is amongst others ensuring that the differentiated antibody drug candidates which are created using Absci’s de novo AI model transition successfully towards the clinic.

SOPHIA HOBER
 

Sophia Hober is Professor of Molecular Biotechnology at KTH, Stockholm, Sweden. During her career, she has worked on developing affinity molecules for in vitro and in vivo diagnostics, where recent findings have led to a very effective method for finding HER2-expressing cancers via a newly developed radioactive affinity molecule. This has been confirmed in clinical studies, where small metastases, undetectable with regular methods, could be visualized. The targeting module has also been optimized for therapeutic applications. Further, Prof. Hober has focused on developing molecules for highly specific purification of monoclonal antibodies. Among other applications, this effort has led to a purification method that is used globally by the majority of the pharmaceutical companies that produce and purify therapeutic antibodies (MabSelect SuRe, marketed by Cytiva). Currently, one focus of her research is the development of novel protein domains that display calcium-dependent binding. The ion-dependent mechanism is utilized both to develop mild affinity purification strategies and to increase internalization into cells, thereby improving the therapeutic effect for cancer treatment. 

ANDREW KRUSE
 

Dr. Kruse began his independent career as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School in 2014. Key research accomplishments include defining the structural basis for agonist action at the angiotensin II type 1 receptor and other G protein-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), cloning the sigma-2 receptor, and determining the first structure of a tetraspanin protein and showing how it regulates B cell activation. The Kruse lab also developed a single-domain antibody fragment discovery platform. Dr. Kruse is a co-founder of Tectonic Therapeutic, a biotechnology company, and the Institute for Protein Innovation, a non-profit research organization. He has received awards including an Amgen Young Investigator Award (2019), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2017), a Vallee Scholars Award (2016), and an NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (2015). He received B.S. degrees in Mathematics and Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota in 2009, and completed a Ph.D. in Structural Biology at Stanford University in 2014, where he trained with Dr. Brian Kobilka.

LARRY GOLD

Dr. Larry Gold is the Founder, Past Chairman, and Past CEO of SomaLogic. Prior to SomaLogic, he founded NeXagen, which merged with Gilead Sciences, Inc. to form a global organization committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel products that treat infectious diseases. Dr. Gold is a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and he was Chairman of the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Department from 1988 to 1992. Dr. Gold is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and he is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

MATT BAKER

Matt currently works in a strategy and business development role for Thermo Fisher Scientific and has been working in the antibody research space for more than 25 years. During this time he has served multiple roles including leading R&D and product management teams in the development of thousands of antibodies. More recently, Matt worked to help organize the IWGAV and has participated in the ongoing discussions on how to improve antibody characterization and testing standards. He believes that antibodies are critical to research and is committed to finding ways to continually advance validation practices and methods.

ALED EDWARDS

Dr. Aled Edwards is founder and Chief Executive of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), an open science public-private partnership that generates research tools for human proteins, including chemical probes.  Al also co-founded the YCharOS open science initiative, which profiles commercial antibodies by comparing signals side-by-side in knock-out and parental cell lines, and then making the data available without restriction. Al is a Professor at the University of Toronto and Adjunct Professor at McGill University. He trained at McGill and Stanford Universities.

 RIHAM AYOUBI
 

Director of Operations, the YCharOS group, Structural Genomics Consortium site at the Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University). Riham completed her PhD at University of Montreal where she specialized in cellular and molecular biology. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the NeuroSGC site where she participated in building the YCharOS initiative to characterize commercial research antibodies for all human proteins, an open collaboration with 10 antibody manufacturers and 2 knockout cell line providers. Antibodies are tested side-by-side in western blot, immunoprecipitation, and immunofluorescence, using knockout cell lines as negative control. Antibody characterization data are rapidly and openly published (f1000research.com/ycharos and zenodo.org/communities/ycharos). Riham developed and scaled up the antibody characterization protocols and coordinates YCharOS studies. Through the YCharOS platform, she helped characterize over 600 antibodies for 50 human proteins, mostly in neurodegenerative diseases. Her work allowed the quantification of the antibody reliability crisis and helped evaluate the coverage of human proteins by high-quality renewable antibodies (doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.01.543292).

ALEJANDRA SOLACHE
 

As Senior Vice President R&D, Dr. Alejandra Solache heads Abcam’s R&D activities from strategy to product and technology development. As a member of Abcam’s leadership team, she plays a crucial role in shaping the company’s innovation strategy and managing global research and, new product development and validation efforts.  Since joining Abcam in December 2013, Alejandra has combined her scientific expertise, leadership experience, and consumer knowledge to contribute to Abcam's success as a global business. She has led several key strategic initiatives to address important challenges in the life science industry, such as the reproducibility crisis. Through these initiatives, she has significantly improved product quality and helped to raise standards in the industry. Her most recent achievements include the implementation of recombinant production and the setup of multiple validation programs, including CRISPR gene-edited knockout cell lines, the gold standard for antibody validation. Alejandra has championed the transition to a more sustainable antibody offering, moving away from the use of ascites and expanding Abcam’s recombinant portfolio to be one of the largest in the industry. She participates in global initiatives aimed at promoting good practice and improving reproducibility, and received the “Significant Individual Impact” award from CiteAb in 2021 and the FastCompany Award for “Most Innovative Company” in 2023. 

ALEXANDER BALL

Dr. Alexander Ball serves as Senior Scientist at GeneTex, Inc. and has been with the company since 2012. He earned an M.D. from the University of Southern California School of Medicine and completed internal medicine training at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, CA. He then transitioned to academic research at the University of California, Irvine, where he worked on protein complexes mediating chromosome dynamics.  Since joining GeneTex, he has spearheaded the company’s enhanced antibody validation initiative.

SOFIA BERGSTRÖM

Sofia Bergström is a researcher at the division of Affinity Proteomics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology SciLifeLab in Stockholm. Her research is centered on antibody-based neuroproteomics where she is studying protein profiles in CSF and plasma in relation to various aspects of neurodegenerative diseases. She received her PhD in biotechnology from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. She is also a member of the Human Protein Atlas, focusing on the new section called the Disease Blood Atlas. The Disease Blood Atlas strives to provide a comprehensive map of protein levels in human blood across most major diseases and the results will be made available as an open-access resource. 

MAHASISH SHOME
 

Dr. Mahasish Shome is currently working on understanding the immunoproteomics of diseases like Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Long COVID. His research identifies the antibody-based biomarkers in serum of the patients and correlates with B cell repertoire analysis from peripheral blood mononuclear cells. In order to accomplish this, he uses various affinity proteomics techniques like protein microarrays and Luminex beads assay. He also uses single-cell RNA sequencing tool (10x genomics) to determine the sequence of the B cell receptor. During his graduate training, he worked extensively on designing, probing, and analyzing protein microarrays. He worked on glass and silicon microarrays. In addition, he worked on affinity proteomics techniques based on in-solution assays where proteins of interest are barcoded with unique DNA oligonucleotides. The antigen and antibody binding take place in the solution and is measured by sequencing the barcodes.

ODA STOEVESANDT

Oda Stoevesandt is Head of Services at PEPperPRINT GmbH (Heidelberg, Germany), a company built around laser printing of custom peptide arrays for applications including epitope mapping, serum biomarker discovery and protein-peptide interaction screening. Applying her background in biochemistry and physical chemistry, she oversees customer projects from the lab through to reporting. During her PhD (Tübingen, Germany) she developed methods for the detection of protein-protein interactions based on fluorescence cross correlation spectroscopy, before moving into the field of peptide and protein microarrays. At the Babraham Institute (Cambridge, UK) she optimised a protein array based on cell free protein expression and was part of the set-up of Cambridge Protein Arrays Ltd.  During this time, Oda was also involved in the coordination of the EU FP6 and FP7 projects Proteome Binders (2006-2010), Affinity Proteome (2009-2012) and Affinomics (2010-2015), which directly led to the inception of the series of Alpbach Affinity Proteomics meetings. She looks forward to returning to Alpbach!

BRIAN KAY

Brian Kay earned his A.B. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago and Yale University, respectively. He then did post-doctoral training at the National Institutes of Health, where he learned cell and developmental biology and honed his skills in molecular biology. He has had academic appointments at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Argonne National Laboratory, and finally at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was Professor and Head of the Department of Biological Sciences. His research focused on mapping protein-protein interactions, generating recombinant affinity reagents, and phage-display, and has an H-Index of 59. He is currently CEO of Tango Biosciences, a phage-display CRO, which is based in Chicago.

TOM SOH

Dr. H. Tom Soh is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Radiology at Stanford University. His laboratory develops synthetic biomaterials and biosensor devices. He earned his B.S. (1992), with a double major in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science with Distinction from Cornell University and his M.S. (1995) and Ph.D. (1999) in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Between 1999 and 2003, he served as a technical manager of MEMS device research group at Bell Laboratories and Agere Systems. Between 2003 and 2015, he was the Ruth Garland Professor at UC-Santa Barbara (UCSB) in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials. His lab moved to Stanford in 2015. He is a recipient of numerous awards including MIT Technology Review’s “TR 100” Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, Beckman Young Investigator Award, ALA Innovator Award, NIH Director’s TR01 Award, NIH Edward Nagy Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Alexander van Humboldt Fellowship. Dr. Soh is a Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

HARIPRIYA SRIDHARAN

Haripriya Sridharan has a background in viral infectious diseases focusing on viral molecular biology and host pathogen interactions in innate immunity. During her PhD, she identified a species-specific role of the host ISG15 protein in influenza B virus infections. During her post- doctoral work, she identified a role for the viral IE3 protein in viral induced necroptosis during mouse cytomegalovirus infections. Her PhD and post-doctoral work were conducted at the University of Texas at Austin. She understands the critical role antibodies play in advancing basic and applied research and the value of extensively tested and specific antibodies. At Thermo Fisher Scientific over the past six years, she has been leading a team focused on evaluating and applying various technologies for recombinant antibody development and antibody engineering to deliver superior performance in various immuno-applications in the research space.

NEBOJSA JANJIC

Nebojsa Janjic has been CSO at SomaLogic since 2009 developing a new generation of aptamers for biomedical applications. Prior to SomaLogic, Dr. Janjic was co-founder and CSO at Replidyne, a company developing new antibiotics, and NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, the original aptamer company. His contributions include the early development of Macugen, the first aptamer and the first VEGF inhibitor approved for the treatment of macular degeneration. Dr. Janjic received a bachelor's degree in molecular biology and a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry from University of Washington in Seattle and completed postdoctoral training at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla as Cancer Research Institute Fellow.

THOMAS SCHIRRMANN

Thomas Schirrmann is an expert in immunology, immunotherapy and recombinant antibody technologies. He obtained his PhD in immunology working on cell and gene therapy using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) Natural Killer (NK) cells. In 2005, he joined the Department of Biotechnology of the University of Braunschweig, where he gained his broad interdisciplinary expertise in next generation antibody technologies, engineering and expression technologies, bispecific antibodies, recombinant fusion proteins and CARs. Thomas is author of more than 75 research articles, reviews and scientific book chapters. He is co-inventor of several patents and co-founder of three companies. Since 2012, he is CEO of the German biotech company YUMAB, which develops therapeutic human and humanized antibodies for clients and partners world-wide bridging the gap between research innovation and biopharmaceutical industry (www.yumab.com). In 2020, he spun-out CORAT Therapeutics, where he acted as founding CEO and currently as COO.

MARKUS SEEGER

Markus Seeger is Associate Professor at the University of Zurich. His lab has developed the widely used sybody (synthetic single domain antibody) platform to routinely generate conformation-specific affinity reagents against integral membrane proteins. In his own lab, sybodies are instrumental to facilitate structure determination of membrane transporters from pathogenic bacteria. With the flycode technology based on designer peptides tailored for mass spectrometry, his lab developed a powerful method for the simultaneous analysis of large antibody cassettes both in vitro and in vivo, which offers unprecedented opportunities to overcome biodelivery bottlenecks. He is co-founder of Linkster Therapeutics.

FLORIAN SCHMIDT

Florian I. Schmidt is a professor at the University of Bonn and his lab is interested in molecular regulation of inflammation and antiviral defense mechanisms. Florian studied Biochemistry at TU Munich and obtained his PhD at ETH Zurich, studying host cell entry of poxviruses. He received post-doctoral training at the Whitehead Institute/MIT, where he employed the nanobody technology to obtain mechanistic insights into inflammasome assembly and virus replication. In 2017, he returned to Germany to start his own research group in Bonn, funded by the Emmy Noether program of the DFG.

RAMÓN HURTADO GUERRERO

Since 2009, I have been a permanent Aragon I+D Research Investigator and the Head of the Biophysics Area at the University of Zaragoza (BIFI). In 2019, I was promoted to the R4 level, equivalent to a full Professor. Since 2018, I also serve as a visiting investigator at the Copenhagen Center for Glycomics (University of Copenhagen), expanding collaborations in functional and structural biology of carbohydrate active enzymes. My research focuses on molecular and catalytic mechanisms of glycosyltransferases, transglycosidases, glycosidases, and mucinases. I have also contributed to understanding protein glycosylation initiation and the involvement of the above enzymes in different diseases. 

PHILIPPE RONDARD

Philippe Rondard is recognized in the field of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) neuropharmacology. He studies the metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) receptors, a family of eight receptors important to control synaptic transmission in brain and involved in neurological, psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. He recently established proof-of-concept that camelid single domain antibodies targeting mGlu receptors are emerging new drugs to treat brain disorders. He found that the nanobodies are able to control mGlu receptor activity in vivo, and that these antibodies can be delivered to the brain after a peripheral administration to reverse brain deficits. Furthermore, he used these nanobodies as tools to discover that mGlu subunits, in addition to forming homodimers, are capable of functioning as heterodimers, then revealing the existence of novel neuroreceptors in the brain. He leads a collaborative team established with Revvity for the development of new HTRF® assays.

CECILE VINCKE

Cécile Vincke is a Belgian scientist who studied Bio-engineering Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. After her Master, she started a PhD at the Laboratory for Cellular and Molecular Immunology under the supervision of Prof. Dr. S. Muyldermans. Her research was mainly focused on the humanization of camelid Nanobodies and the identification of Nanobodies against Alzheimer’s Disease. After her PhD in 2009, she continued her research in the same facility as contributing partner in the EU granted ‘Affinomics’ consortium until 2015. Her main objectives are to continuously broaden the efficacy of Nanobodies and extend their applications in medical or biotechnological fields where the unique properties of Nanobodies offer a clear advantage over other antibody formats. More specifically she currently focusses on the generation of new Nanobody-based immuno-tracers for defined targets to image specific immune cell subsets and allow the monitoring of immune cell activation and dynamics in oncology and inflammatory diseases via non-invasive whole-body imaging (www.immune-image.eu).

STEVE SCHOONOOGHE

Steve is currently a senior project manager and Nanobody Specialist at VIB’s Nanobody Core in Brussels. He got into antibody engineering in 1998 during his Master's thesis at the University of Gent and got specialized further in the field during his PhD, also at UGent, in which he made bispecific antibodies for immune cell activation in cancer therapy. After a stint in Mubio, a spin-out of Maastricht University, on an EU framework project on finding new lung cancer antigens, he returned to Belgium in 2009 where he started working on Nanobodies targeting macrophages in the VIB Cellular & Molecular Immunology group at the VUB in Brussels. At the end of 2015, he joined the VIB Nanobody Core where he started managing Nanobody generation projects and helped to expand the group’s services in Nanobody engineering and characterization.

FRANK ERASMUS

M. Frank Erasmus has over 15 years of experience in applying experimental and computational methods crucial to antibody therapeutics. He began his career as a protein analytical chemist in industry, focusing on antibody developability. Later, he transitioned to an academic career at Los Alamos National Labs and the Spatiotemporal Modeling Center of New Mexico. During this time, he was a National Cancer Institute Research Fellow for his work on employing structural modeling and single-particle tracking capabilities for the development of novel antibody modalities for childhood leukemia. Currently, Frank serves as the Head of Bioinformatics at Specifica, a Q² Solutions Company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In this role, he utilizes machine learning and next-generation sequencing to develop internal and commercial software pipelines for antibody discovery. Frank continues to play an integral part in Specifica's technological development and has co-authored several papers and patents related to the company's state-of-the-art discovery platform.

FRIDTJOF LUND-JOHANSEN

Fridtjof Lund-Johansen leads a proteomics research group at the Oslo University Hospital in Norway. He is inventor of Microsphere Affinity Proteomics (MAP), where polymer microspheres with thousands of fluorescent bar codes are used as solid support for antibodies or proteins. MAP-antibody arrays are used to measure extensively fractionated biological samples for assays that resemble highly multiplexed western blots. Parallel analysis of the fractions by shotgun mass spectrometry provides means to assess the specificity of thousands of affinity reagents in parallel. Collaborators include manufacturers of research antibodies and more recently SomaLogic. MAP protein arrays are used for proteome-wide screening of targets for autoantibodies, and a current project aims to develop an assay to measure humoral immunity to hundreds of viruses in parallel. 

PETER NILSSON
 

Since 2011, Peter Nilsson has been a Professor in Proteomics at SciLifeLab and KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He received his PhD degree in biotechnology from KTH in 1998. He has been the head of the protein array technology group within the Human Protein Atlas since 2003 and is currently scientific director of the Clinical Proteomics and Immunology national platform at SciLifeLab. Professor Nilsson has been a member of the steering group of HUPO Human Brain Proteome Project (HBPP) since 2015.  His research is devoted to affinity proteomics-based analysis of blood and CSF, enabled through various multiplex bead-based and planar protein array formats. The focus is on the development and utilization of multi-disease serology assays, antibody-based protein profiling within neuroproteomics, and autoantibody profiling within post-COVID and inflammatory autoimmune disorders. See http://www.publicationslist.org/nipe for a complete list of publications. 

JAMES TRIMMER

Professor Trimmer's research program focuses on the expression, localization and function of neuronal ion channel complexes at the proteomic level, and on generation, validation and use of renewable and recombinant antibodies in diverse neuroscience research applications. He is founding director of the non-profit UC Davis/NIH NeuroMab Facility that generates high quality, low cost monoclonal antibodies for neuroscience research, and whose antibodies have been cited in over 6,000 research publications. His current efforts focus on generating a publicly available database of antibody sequences from high throughput Illumina-based sequencing of his extensive hybridoma collection, generation and open access non-profit dissemination of recombinant versions of NeuroMabs as IgG and as scFvs, and development of camelid nanobodies for neuroscience research. 

JOCHEN SCHWENK
 

Jochen M Schwenk is a Professor in Translational Proteomics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. His primary interest is studying circulating blood proteins to decipher their role in human health and disease. His lab at the Science for Life Laboratory (www.scilifelab.se) works on the novel aspect of proteome analyses, including study design, micro-sampling, pre-analytical variables, assay development, antibody validation, and data integration for translational possibilities. Jochen is chair of HUPO’s Plasma Proteome Project, a member of the Human Protein Atlas (www.proteinatlas.org), and a Scientific Director of SciLifeLab’s Affinity Proteomics Unit. Twitter: @jochwenk

CARL BORREBAECK

Carl Borrebaeck received the first chair as professor of Immunotechnology in Scandinavia 1990.

His main research interests are cancer proteomics, for early detection and prognosis, and antibody based immuno-oncology. He founded CREATE Health Translational Cancer Center 2006 and has authored over 350 peer-reviewed publications and is the inventor in 55 patents. He is a permanent member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He received the AKZO Nobel Science Award 2009, for his contributions to cancer proteomics and antibody-based therapy, the Research!Sweden Award 2012 for his medical research of value for patients and health organizations, the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences Gold Medal 2012 for outstanding contributions to biomedical science and the Biotech Builder of the year in 2017. His research has resulted in several spin-out companies, such as BioInvent International AB, Alligator Bioscience AB, Immunovia AB, SenzaGen AB, and PainDrainer AB.

CHRISTIAN HENTRICH
 

Christian Hentrich is a Senior Scientist at Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., working with the R&D team to create new products. His interests include antibody engineering, in vitro evolution, bioinformatics, and machine learning. Christian earned his PhD from EMBL Heidelberg and Heidelberg University, then completed a postdoc at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital.

CLAUDIA FONSECA
 

Cláudia graduated in biological sciences from the University of Porto and subsequently was a research scientist at Ablynx, a leading biotechnology company developing single domain nanobodies, first in Porto and then in Ghent where her responsibilities were mainly in phage display of nanobodies. She joined the Babraham Institute in Cambridge as a research scientist  in 2014 and became a permanent staff member of Cambridge Protein Arrays Ltd. in 2015. She completed her PhD in Cambridge with a thesis on autoantibody repertoires in a healthy population. Her expertise includes different aspects of protein array systems, including design, preparation, sample processing and data analysis. Cláudia has been integral to several EU projects, including AFFINOMICS (2014-15), Large Prospective Cohorts (BBMRI-LPC, 2014-17) and Standardisation of pre-analytical procedures for in-vitro diagnostics (SPIDIA4P, 2017-21). In addition, she served on the editorial team of New Biotechnology (Elsevier).

MIKE TAUSSIG

Mike Taussig, the main organiser of this workshop, is founder and CEO of Cambridge Protein Arrays Ltd. and formerly head of the Protein Technology Group at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge. He codeveloped ribosome display technology for selection of antibodies, and in situ protein arraying, and participated in crystallographic structure determinations of anti-steroid antibodies and autoantibodies (rheumatoid factors), as well as in the development of transgenic mice producing human antibodies. He has managed several large EU and ESF networking and research projects, including three EU consortia aiming to establish European resources of affinity binding reagents for analysis of the human proteome, namely ProteomeBinders (2006-2010), AffinityProteome (2009-2012) and AFFINOMICS (2010-2015). He is the previous Editor in Chief of New Biotechnology (Elsevier), and author of "Processes in Pathology and Microbiology".  Mike is a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and a Visiting Professor at Anglia Ruskin University.

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