Dr. Michael McGuire
Dr. Maguire is President and CEO of Avectas, a cell engineering technology company. He has 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry, serving as a founder, investor, director and business leader. Dr. Maguire graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, as a biomedical engineer and completed his PhD on local drug delivery to the lung. Dr. Maguire is focused on creating value by addressing critical intracellular delivery challenges in cell therapies.
Steven Feldman
Dr. Steven A. Feldman was a Staff Scientist and Director of the Vector Production Facility at Surgery Branch, NCI for the past twelve years. Dr. Feldman’s group was responsible for the development, characterization, and manufacturing of the viral vectors used in gene therapy clinical trials at the Surgery Branch. Recently, Dr. Feldman joined the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy as Director of Manufacturing and Process Science where he will take a lead role in the development and manufacture of viral vectors and novel cell therapies for the treatment of cancer.
Neehar Bhatia
Neehar Bhatia, Ph.D. is Associate Director of Process Development and Manufacturing at Laboratory of Cell and Gene Medicine (LCGM), Stanford University. Dr. Bhatia received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Central Drug Research Institute, India. Dr. Bhatia is responsible for development and manufacturing of cGMP compliant cell and gene therapy products at LCGM. Dr. Bhatia oversees manufacturing for multiple projects such as CD19/CD22 bi-specific CAR-T and other T cell based therapies, CD34 HSPC transplant and manufacturing of AAV6 for gene correction in HSPC. Dr. Bhatia has lead multiple projects which include banking of ESCs, iPSCs, MSCs and iPSC derived differentiated cells, development of GMP process for translational projects and manufacturing cell therapies for Phase I/II clinical trials. Dr. Bhatia has also lead efforts in quest for serum-free chemically defined culture medium for MSCs and development of platform technology for AAV production. Dr. Bhatia’s focus is on development of cGMP compliant manufacturing process for “bench to bedside” cell and gene therapies.
Wouter Van t'Hof
Mitchell h. Finer
Zoe Coughlin
Zoe Coughlin is the Associate Director of CMC at Immatics US, Inc. in Houston, Tx leading the clinical manufacturing of adoptive cell therapy programs for various solid cancers. Zoe has more than 10 years of experience in GMP manufacturing of cell and gene therapy products and has helped guide all 4 Immatics’ active clinical trials through pre-clinical development, IND approval, and patient treatment. Before joining Immatics, Zoe was a Senior Clinical Cell Therapy Specialist at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center involved in the manufacture and administration of multiple cell therapy products including the Sleeping Beauty transposon-based CAR-T program. Zoe holds a M.S. in Clinical Practice Management and maintains a MLS (ASCP)CM certification.
Knut Niss
Dr. Niss has served as Chief Technology Officer since March 2018. Dr. Niss joined Mustang in March 2017 as Vice President of Operations, where he initiated and oversees the establishment of Mustang’s cell therapy manufacturing facility. Prior to Mustang, Dr. Niss was Cell Therapy Asset Leader at Biogen, where he oversaw CMC-related activities for gene-edited hematopoietic stem cell and lentiviral gene therapy programs for sickle cell disease and hemophilia, respectively. Earlier in his career, Dr. Niss was Senior Technical Project Leader at Novartis’ cell therapy manufacturing facility in Morris Plains, New Jersey, where he directed the transfer and implementation of the CTL019 process from Penn to Novartis. He also served as Senior R&D Program Manager at EMD Millipore, where he established processes for the large-scale expansion of adult and pluripotent stem cells. Dr. Niss began his career in senior research positions in Pfizer’s Regenerative Medicine and Immunology groups. He holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Humboldt University of Berlin, and an M.S. in microbiology from the University of Göttingen in Germany. Dr. Niss completed his postdoctoral research at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
