Optimizing for the future: streamlining the production of T cell-based immunotherapies

Dr Paula Lam graduated from the University of Leeds in the UK majoring in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. Following this, she undertook postdoctoral training at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Tennessee, USA) as well as Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, USA) before returning to Singapore as a group leader at the National Cancer Center where her research focus lies in developing vectors with enhanced specificity and potencies against human cancers. She is currently the Chief Scientific Officer of BioCell Innovations, a clinical-stage biotech, with a primary objective to bring cell and gene therapies to patients-in-need. BioCell responsible for the development of in-house CAR lentiviral vectors and cell-based immunotherapies by leveraging a novel manufacturing platform.

Dr Soong Poh Loong (PL) is a Field Application Scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific supporting the Cell and Gene Therapy portfolio across Asia-Pacific and Japan. He manages a team of Application Scientists with a focus on providing technical consultations and process optimization support to early clinical-stage developers. PL also works in collaboration with Thermo Fisher’s scientists to lead and implement collaboration projects.

Prior to joining Thermo Fisher, PL had over 20 years of experience and expertise in human stem cell research, GMP cell lines generation, and cardiac tissue engineering, PL's translational research interests center around stem cell-based disease modeling, heart regeneration, and repair. He is a member of the ISSCR, European Society for Cardiology, and the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) and obtained his Dr. rer. nat. from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany, with a summa cum laude thesis and patents on Engineered Heart Muscles for heart failure treatment. This multi-centered work has since progressed to a First-in-Human clinical trial of the BioVAT-HF therapeutic device for terminal heart failure. PL also co-founded a Singapore biotech startup that develops high-speed platforms for cellular characterization, disease modeling, and drug safety screening.