Lani Wu

Professor
University of California, San Francisco

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Matthew Hewitt, B.A. Ph.D., currently serves as Vice President, CTO Manufacturing Business Division at Charles River Laboratories (CRL) playing a critical role in driving CGT strategic vision as well as leading multiple operational initiatives across CRL’s CGT CDMO, Biologics Testing, and Microbial Solutions global network.
 
Before joining CRL, he was Head of R&D and Clinical Development for Lonza’s Personalized Medicine Business Unit leading Cocoon platform development, a closed, automated, scalable cell therapy manufacturing solution. In addition, he executed numerous collaborations across academia and industry leveraging the Cocoon.
 
Prior to Lonza, Matt led the Tumor Immunology and Microenvironment program at Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, focusing on improving cell therapy efficacy in solid tumors. He also led the Immunology group at the University of Pennsylvania’s Gene Therapy Program, leading and contributing to numerous AAV gene therapy programs.
 
Matt received his B.A. in Molecular Biology at Goucher College while playing Men’s Lacrosse, PhD in Biophysics and Physiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University within the Asthma and Allergy Division.

 

Speech title & Synopsis

Opposites Attract: Fast Technology & Deliberate Regulatory: How can manufacturing adapt to meet therapeutic demand?

Drug development has gotten more complex moving from small molecule chemistry to using cell lines to manufacturing pieces of biology, such as monoclonal antibodies, to employing entire biological entities (cells and viral vectors) to enable curative/corrective therapies. Regardless of the modality, it’s critical to choose the right pharma development partner for your project. Charles River Laboratories has been assisting partners in their therapeutic development journey for almost 80 years. During this talk I will walk through several program case studies where I can illustrate how Charles River’s comprehensive portfolio has enabled our thera peutic development partners to shorten their timelines resulting in more efficient use of capital and effort.