Accelerating your gene therapy to patients: not all platforms are created equal

George Buchman, Ph.D. is Vice President, Pre-Clinical and Process Development at Catalent Cell & Gene Therapy. Dr. Buchman joined Catalent through its acquisition of Paragon Gene Therapy in 2019. He has more than 30 years of experience in the biotech industry and has held roles at companies including Life Technologies (now Thermo Fisher), Celera Genomics and GeneLogic. Dr. Buchman obtained a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Albright College, Reading, Pennsylvania, and a doctorate in biochemistry from University of Maryland.

Thomas VanCott, PhD is currently the Chief Scientific Officer for Combined Therapeutics, a Boston-based biotech company developing targeted mRNA therapies. Prior to this he served as the Product Development VP for Catalent Cell & Gene Therapy, a global CDMO manufacturing viral vectors for gene and cell therapies as wells as plasmid DNA & mRNA platforms based in Baltimore, MD. He was responsible for strategically enhancing and augmenting CMC services to meet the market demand of increasingly complex gene therapy products as well as leading the product development and internal R&D teams. Prior to this, he was the CEO for 10 years at a Maryland-based CMO/CRO (ABL) where he was responsible for the strategic international growth of the company. He has been involved in virus and biologic product development for over 25 years. He has a PhD in physical chemistry and started his career as a Captain in the US Army stationed at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) studying and developing HIV vaccines for international deployment from initial construction, preclinical development and GMP manufacturing through to clinical trials.