Plenary Session: Wednesday 20 March
NEXT-GENERATION PROCESSES AND PRODUCTS

11:15 Chairperson

Manuel Carrondo, PhD, Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, FCT-UNL, Vice President, IBET

11:20 Bioprocessing Innovations in the Era of Clinical Acceleration and Process Intensification

Stefanos Grammatikos, PhD., Vice President, Head, Biotech Sciences, UCB Pharma

Current trends in clinical development acceleration and bioprocess intensification impose an unprecedented compression of CMC development timelines and new bioprocessing challenges downstream of the cell culture bioreactor. In this talk I will present a series of innovations we have introduced, some incremental and some potentially disruptive, in an effort to avoid further complications while rising to the latest challenges of bio CMC development and bioprocessing.

11:50 Opportunities and Challenges in CAR T Manufacturing

Markwin Velders, PhD., Vice President, Operations, Managing Director, Kite Pharma EU B.V.

Update on the status of CAR-T development for use in the treatment of cancer. The success story of this paradigm shift and the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead for this therapy will be presented and discussed.

Biographies

Stefanos Grammatikos, PhD., Vice President, Head, Biotech Sciences, UCB Pharma

Stefanos Grammatikos is heading Biotech Sciences,  the biologics CMC Development organization of UCB. He is overseeing drug substance/API, formulation, drug product, analytical methods and primary and secondary packaging development for all of UCB’s pipeline biologics from candidate selection to market launch. Stefanos joined UCB in 2008 attracted by the opportunity to build new biotech capacities, capabilities and expertise and thus help the company realize its aspiration to bring to patients innovative biotech products and become a leader in biopharmaceuticals. Under his direction highly expert teams and a number of state-of-the art facilities were built and high performance platforms for UCB’s mammalian cell culture and microbial products have been realized.

Markwin Velders, PhD., Vice President, Operations, Managing Director, Kite Pharma EU B.V.

Dr. Markwin Velders brings over 18 years of management experience in biotechnology companies. He obtained his PhD from Leiden University and after a post-doc and associate professorship at Loyola University in Chicago, he became Chief Scientific Officer at AM-Pharma. After bringing two compounds from bench to bed at AM-Pharma, Markwin moved to TNO Biosciences as a Business Unit Manager, managing a group of 150 professionals. Since 2011 he has been independently active as Prime Life Science, assisting various start-up and early life science companies with their strategy, financing, business development and interim management. He has been involved in the start-up of several new ventures, and secured funding for 4 Life Science start-ups.