Pioneers in biopharma: Meet the leaders steering the industry on a path that celebrates and supports women

Join us for this one-day virtual event to hear from three amazing thought leaders taking the biopharma industry to new heights.

17:00 CEST Presentation 1: Multispecific therapeutic antibodies: Using intact mass characterization to guide strategic decisions in early-stage research

Multispecific antibodies have emerged as powerful modulators of many important disease-relevant signaling pathways. A number of multispecific formats have been developed, each with their own benefits and challenges with respect to efficacy, expression yield, and ease of purification. Formats that employ multiple distinct chains and asymmetric pairing can be especially challenging from an analytical perspective due to the potential for chain mispairing. Characterization of these molecules by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and analytical hydrophobic interaction chromatography (aHIC) enables identification and quantification of the molecules, respectively.

In this presentation, Dr. Kalie Mix will highlight the insights revealed by using a combination of these techniques, which can be used to guide early-stage research decisions.

Dr. Kalie Mix (Senior scientist, Sanofi Large Molecule Research Organization)

Dr. Kalie Mix is a senior scientist in the Large Molecule Research department of Sanofi. Prior to working at Sanofi, Mix attended Middlebury College in Vermont, then received her Ph.D. in biochemistry at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mix then transitioned to a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, where she performed research focused on the cytosolic delivery of proteins using chemical modifications. In her current role, Mix is part of the Biologics Characterization, Expression, and Production (“BiCEP”) subteam, working to produce antigen and antibody proteins to support early-stage research in antibody discovery.

18:00 CEST Presentation 2: Process development, characterization, and understanding in an integrated continuous monoclonal antibody manufacturing testbed

Process and product understanding is at the root of manufacturers’ efforts to produce safe and effective medicines. Researchers in Dr. Elizabeth Cummings Bende’s group at MIT are building novel mathematical modeling tools for the manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals based on first principles and data analytics. To experimentally validate these modeling tools and fully understand the impact of model choice on product quality, a fully instrumented and integrated continuous testbed for the manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) was constructed.

Dr. Elizabeth M. Cummings Bende (Postdoctoral Associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Biomedical Innovation)

Dr. Elizabeth Cummings Bende is a postdoctoral associate at MIT in the Center for Biomedical Innovation, and works with Professor Anthony J. Sinskey, Dr. Stacy L. Springs, and Professor Richard D. Braatz. Bende earned her B.S.E. from the University of Pennsylvania in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2013 and her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Chemical Engineering 2018. Her Ph.D. research focused on an industrial cell culture process for clonal propagation in pine trees. At MIT, Bende is working to design, build, and commission a continuous manufacturing testbed for monoclonal antibodies to be used for development and validation of process modeling tools.

19:00 CEST Presentation 3: Symbiotic relationships: The art of collaboration

In this presentation, Dr. Melissa Sherman will focus primarily on the broadly relevant critical success factors that contribute to a win-win collaboration, in this case, between a large, established, industry leading corporation and a small, emerging start-up company.

MOBILion Systems is partnering with Agilent Technologies to integrate its patented ion mobility separations technology, structures for lossless ion manipulation (SLIM), with Agilent’s Q-TOF mass spectrometry platform to provide unparalleled analytical capability, enabling pharmaceutical and academic researchers to make novel discoveries. MOBILion’s first SLIM-based high-resolution ion mobility (HRIM) product, launching in June 2021, is designed to enable fast, efficient separation and identification of molecules other instruments fail to detect, providing, better, faster CQA characterization of biologic therapeutics to bring drugs to market faster.

Dr. Melissa Sherman (CEO, MOBILion Systems Inc.)

Dr. Melissa Sherman is the founding CEO of MOBILion Systems Inc., an analytical instrumentation company accelerating biotherapeutic drug development and multiomic biomarker discovery with products based on the SLIM high-resolution ion mobility separations technology invented by Dr. Richard Smith at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Sherman is a polymer chemist by training and has spent her 20 plus-year corporate career building and growing businesses within Fortune 100 companies and start-ups, in industries ranging from fashion apparel to FDA-regulated surgical materials. With a successful exit track record, Sherman has a passion for building successful high-tech businesses driven by best-in-class teams, with speed and execution efficiency.

Moderator: Charlie Carter (Editorial Team, SelectScience)

Charlie studied neuroscience at the University of Bristol, UK, before completing a Masters in Science Communication. As a member of the Editorial team, Charlie plays an integral role in shaping the content on SelectScience.