Dr. Ting has over 30 years of academic and industry experience in translational science and global regulatory filing with over 20 years in the cell therapy field. He is the Chief Commercialization Officer and on the Board of Directors for the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT) and serves on committees for the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) and the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI). He is currently the Principal for BRL C&GT Consulting. Most recently, he served as the Chief Scientific Officer for Bone Therapeutics, a publicly traded company in Brussels, where he developed a novel induced-pluripotent stem cell platform for genetically engineered mesenchymal stem cells. Dr. Ting also served on the senior management team of Athersys, a Nasdaq-listed clinical-stage cell therapy company, as Vice President of Regenerative Medicine and Head of Cardiopulmonary Programs where he was responsible for all stages of development, from the bench to the bedside for the cardiovascular and pulmonary programs with Athersys’ most advanced cell therapy product MultiStem ^® , an allogeneic adult bone marrow-derived stem cell product. Prior to joining Athersys, he was a Principal Investigator and Head of the Novel Inhibitors Screening Group at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) at the National University of Singapore, which identified new therapeutic targets through high-throughput screening. Dr. Ting had a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University in Molecular and Cellular Physiology and received his PhD in Cell Biology from Johns Hopkins University and his B.A. in Biology from Amherst College.

Contact information

Anthony Ting, PhD

Principal

BRL C&GT Consulting

Shaker Heights, OH 44122

Tel: (440) 941-4688

ating@brlcgtconsulting.com

Matt Olsen is currently the Fluid Management Technologies Manager for North America at Sartorius.  He is a chemical engineer and has been working at Sartorius since 2003 in a variety of technical roles developing and working with single-use technologies.  His responsibilities have included single-use freezing, storage and mixing applications.

Dr. Svahn defended his doctoral thesis at Karolinska Institutet in 2007. Parts of his work was funded by Fernström scholarship, conducted at Rockefeller and Columbia University in New York, exploring high-through-put technology for siRNA drug development. He has since then experience from both small cell therapy companies and big pharma. Dr. Svahn co-founded NextCell Pharma, listed on Nasdaq First North in 2017 and has raised approximately 30 MUSD. The primary drug candidate, ProTrans, is an allogeneic mesenchymal stromal cell product, developed for immunomodulatory purposes. Efficacy and safety have been shown in the protection of endogenous insulin production in patients with type-1 diabetes. Currently, NextCell has completed phase 2 trials in type-1 diabetes and has 4 clinical trials ongoing in type-1 diabetes and severe pneumonia induced by COVID-19. Trials are sponsored by NextCell, Uppsala University in Sweden and McGill University in Montreal Canada

Chad Salisbury joined Project Farma in October 2022 as Senior Vice President. Chad has over 20 years of experience encompassing gene therapy, vaccines, sterile injectables and small molecules, including the delivery of ~$2B USD of greenfield cGMP manufacturing facilities.  Chad has held increasingly responsible management positions in manufacturing, quality, engineering and supply chain.

Chad was most recently VP, Manufacturing at Affinia Therapeutics, a company singularly focused on using innovations in gene therapy to lead the fight against devastating rare and prevalent diseases.  Prior to Affinia, Chad held progressive roles at CSL Seqirus, Novartis and Eli Lilly in both the US and Europe.

Chad holds an MBA from Purdue University, an MEM from Duke University and a B.A. from Alfred University.

Kinnari Patel is President & Chief Operating Officer for Rocket Pharma. She oversees IT, HR, regulatory, clinical execution, the global program team, alliance management, CMC, quality and development organizations. She has fifteen years of rare disease Research & Development experience including in Regulatory Science, Pharmacovigilance, Policy and Quality Compliance gained at leading pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, Hoffmann La-Roche and Pfizer. She has led both small molecule and biologic development programs from Phase I through Phase IV across multiple therapeutic areas including immuno-oncology, oncology, respiratory, virology, transplantation and metabolism.  Most notably, Kinnari has worked on Opdivo (nivolumab) from Phase I through BLA filing for metastatic melanoma, RCC and NSCLC, submitted and gained approval of Myalept (metreleptin) for ultra-rare lipodystrophy disease, and submitted Valcyte® (valganciclovir hydrochloride) NDA for prevention of cytomegalovirus disease in pediatric kidney and heart transplant patients.

Kinnari received the dual degrees of B.S. in Biology and Doctorate of Pharmacy from the USciences in Philadelphia, PA. She also completed a two-year Post-Doctoral Regulatory Affairs Fellowship through Rutgers University. Additionally, she received her Executive MBA from NYU Stern School of Business with specialization in Corporate Finance, Leadership and Strategy. Most recently, she graduated from the C-Suite Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program.

In her spare time, Kinnari has a passion for mentoring, teaching and volunteering for non-profit organizations.

Alex Bloom is Chief Technology Officer at AviadoBio and heads up the technical operations and enabling functions (CMC, Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs). Alex brings over 15 years of operational excellence in biologics, with over 10 years spent dedicated to cell and gene therapy development. In this time, Alex has worked on over 25 clinical-stage gene therapy programs. Previously, Alex led quality and regulatory activities at Gyroscope Therapeutics, supporting the development of gene therapies and innovative delivery devices for retinal disease. Before Gyroscope, Alex held CMC technical leadership and regulatory roles of increasing responsibility at Kuur Therapeutics and Chiesi Farmaceutici, where he played a pivotal role in the development and approval of Holoclar®, the first tissue engineered product to be approved in Europe or the US. Earlier in his career, he spent time at Parexel, the Institute of Cancer Research and Meridian Life Sciences.

Alex holds a PhD and MSc from Sheffield University.

Dr. Leonardo Ferreira obtained his PhD from Harvard University, in the laboratories of Jack Strominger and Chad Cowan. There, he worked on transcriptional regulation of immune tolerance in human pregnancy. In addition, he was the first to report successful genome editing in primary human T cells and hematopoietic stem cells using CRISPR/Cas9 and was part of a team creating universally compatible human pluripotent stem cells. As a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratories of Qizhi Tang and Jeff Bluestone at the University of California San Francisco, Dr. Ferreira redirected human regulatory T cells using chimeric antigen receptors (CAR Tregs). Currently, Dr. Ferreira is an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and, by courtesy, of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology at the Medical University of South Carolina and the Hollings Cancer Center. His lab designs and develops engineered immune cell therapies for autoimmune disease, cancer, and aging. 

Melanie Rietenbach is Global Product Manager for the Immunotherapy portfolio at Miltenyi Biotec. During the 3 years, she has been working together with the R&D and Clinical Development Team in order to advance the development of tools to enable engineered T cell immunotherapy. Before that, Melanie already supported Miltenyi Biotec in her role as Application Development Specialist and Clinical Product Specialist for more than three years. During that time, she was responsible for technical support and application training on Miltenyi Biotec’s clinical product portfolio with  focus on cell and gene therapy applications and related products