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Luigi Naldini, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Cell and Tissue Biology and of Gene and Cell Therapy at the San Raffaele University School of Medicine and Scientific Director of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (Milan, Italy). He has received his medical degree from the University of Turin (Italy) and his PhD from the University “La Sapienza” of Rome (Italy).

For the past 25 years he has pioneered the development and the applications of lentiviral vectors for gene therapy, which have become one of the most widely used tools in biomedical research and, upon recently entering clinical testing, are providing a long-sought hope of cures for several currently untreatable and otherwise deadly human diseases. Throughout this time, he has continued to investigate new strategies to overcome the major hurdles to safe and effective gene transfer, bringing about innovative solutions that are not only being translated into new therapeutic strategies for genetic disease and cancer, but have also allowed novel insights into hematopoietic stem cell function, induction of immunological tolerance, and tumor angiogenesis.

His work also contributed to advance the use of artificial nucleases for targeted genome editing in cell and gene therapy. He has published over 280 scientific papers. SCOPUS Author h-index: 101. He is also co-founder of three innovative biotech start-up companies: Genenta (recently listed on Nasdaq), Epsilen Bio (now acquired by Chroma Medicine) and Genespire.

Naldini has a long and consolidated experience in mentoring young scientists, many of whom now hold positions in prestigious research center and academic institutions. A complete list of researchers who trained under Luigi Naldini can be found here.






Willem Mulder, Ph.D., is a professor of Precision Medicine at the Radboud University Medical Center and the Eindhoven University of Technology. His research focuses on developing nanomedicine-based therapies against immune-mediated diseases. Willem Mulder is co-founder and CSO of Trained Therapeutix and co-founder and CTO of BioTrip, biotech companies focusing on translating immunotherapy.

www.mulderlab.com


Dario Neri, Ph.D., was born in Rome on 1. May 1963 and grew up in Siena (Italy). He studied Chemistry at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and earned a PhD in Chemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich), under the supervision of Professor Kurt Wüthrich (Nobel Prize Chemistry 2002). After a post-​doctoral research internship (1992-​1996) at the Medical Research Council Centre in Cambridge (UK), under the supervision of Sir Gregory Winter (Nobel Prize Chrmistry 2018), he became professor at ETH Zürich in 1996. 

Dario Neri is Full Professor of Biomacromolecules at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich. In October 2020, he moved full-time to Philogen (www.philogen.com), a Swiss-Italian Biotech Company which he had co-founded in 1996 and in which he currently serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer, while retaining the ETH Professor title. He is also Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge, UK.

The research activities of the Neri group and of Philogen focus on the engineering of therapeutic antibodies for the therapy of cancer and other angiogenesis-​related disorders and on the development of DNA-​encoded chemical libraries. Two of the antibody products of Philogen are currently being investigated in Phase III clinical trials in Europe and in the United States, while the broader clinical-stage pipeline of Philogen is composed both of antibody-based and of small molecule-based pharmaceuticals.

Dario Neri has published more than 500 articles in peer-​reviewed scientific journals. He is the recipient of the ETH Silbermedaille 1992, ISOBM Abbott Prize 2000, of the Amgen-​Dompe’ Biotec Award 2000, of the Mangia d’Oro 2001, of the Prous Award 2006 of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry, of the Robert-​Wenner-Prize 2007 of the Swiss Cancer League, of the SWISS BRIDGE Award 2008, of the Prix Mentzer of the French Medicinal Chemistry Society in 2011, of the Phoenix Prize 2014, of an ERC Advanced Grant in 2015, the 6th World ADC Award in 2019, the Paul Harris Fellow Award in 2022 and the Pratesi Medal of the Italian Chemical Society in 2023.







Prof. Dean Ho, Ph.D., leads a pre-eminent team with over 10 technology platforms in human clinical trials. He is a Subgroup Lead in the World Health Organization (WHO) AI for Health Regulatory Working Group and was elected to the National Academy of Inventors, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Dean Ho, Ph.D.
Provost’s Chair Professor
Head, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Director, The N.1 Institute for Health (N.1)
Director, The Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM)
Department of Pharmacology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
National University of Singapore


Theresa M. Reineke, Ph.D., is the Prager Chair in Macromolecular Science and Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Minnesota. Her research group is focused on enabling fundamental and applied technology advancements of macromolecules in the fields of gene therapy and genome editing, drug delivery, and sustainability. 







Maria Leptin, PhD, is a developmental biologist and geneticist who is the President of the European Research Council (ERC).

After her studies in mathematics and biology, Maria Leptin carried out her PhD research at the Basel Institute for Immunology. She then moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, became a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, and professor at the Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne.

Before her appointment as ERC President, Leptin was the Director of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in Heidelberg and a research group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

She is an elected member of EMBO, the Academia Europaea and the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). She is an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences.









Kathryn A. Whitehead, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering (courtesy) at Carnegie Mellon University. Her lab develops drug delivery systems for RNA, proteins, and applications in maternal and infant health. She obtained bachelor and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering (Univ. of Delaware; Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) before an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT. Prof. Whitehead is the recipient of numerous awards, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the DARPA Director’s Fellowship, and the ASEE Curtis W. McGraw Research Award. She has also received the Controlled Release Society’s Young Investigator Award and served on its Board of Directors. Prof. Whitehead is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the Controlled Release Society. In 2021, she gave a TED talk on the lipid nanoparticles (i.e., “fat balls”) used in the in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Her publications have been cited over 10,000 times, and her patents have been licensed and sublicensed for reagent and therapeutic use.


Philip Jonas Sassene, Ph.D., has a strong track record in pharmaceutical formulation and drug delivery. He has 10+ years of experience in solid and enabling formulations, including preformulation together with a thorough understanding of the physiology of the gastrointestinal tract. This includes in particular the development of new enabling formulation strategies for oral delivery of peptides & proteins. Philip Jonas Sassene received his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences in 2016 from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is currently employed as a Scientific Director within oral delivery technologies at Novo Nordisk A/S, Denmark.






Laura Sepp-Lorenzino, Ph.D. is the Chief Scientific Officer at Intellia Therapeutics and a recognized expert on nucleic acid therapies R+D. She held leadership positions at Vertex, Alnylam and Merck, serves in several SABs and is a BOD member of Taysha Gene Therapies and the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine.




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July 8 to 12, 2024
Bologna Congressi
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