At BPI Boston this year we were honored to talk to Jean Bender who has enormous experience in process development, antibodies and the industry in general.
Jean is currently VP of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology at Visterra. Earlier in her career, at Medimmune, Jean was responsible for process development and scale-up. At Genentech she was responsible for tech transfer of mAb processes within the Genentech/Roche network. Jean received her MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and her BS in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University.
Jean tells us about:
- why antibodies have been used for such a long time and continue to be widely used as therapeutics
- the difference between the mAbs of today and those that were first produced as therapeutics
- important things to think about as women in the industry and science careers in general
About Visterra
Visterra, based in the Cambridge/Boston area, MA, USA, is a biologics research and early-stage clinical development company developing therapies for patients with immune-mediated and other hard-to-treat diseases. The approach begins with identifying disease-specific targets using single-cell multiomics data and computational analyses and incorporating the use of artificial intelligence approaches to extract key signals that identify selective, novel targets that are critical nodes in a disease process. This insight, along with structure considerations and knowledge of the biology and molecular function, is used to identify specific epitopes to engage, to give maximum therapeutic impact when targeted.
