Empowering the future of cell therapy: leveraging partnerships to support advancement

As Director of Science Operations and Strategic Relationships, Juan provides in-depth scientific, technical and strategic support to resident companies via direct engagement with each resident company. He also supports sponsor relationships identifying new technologies for LC resident companies.

Prior to LabCentral, Juan was Principal Scientist at Novartis designing and developing new assays for drug development and identifying new targets for autoimmune conditions. He has over 20 years of drug development experience working in big pharma as well as star-up companies like the ones housed at LabCentral. His in-depth drug development knowledge will complement the science operations team engaging with resident companies to aid in their success. Juan obtained his BS in Microbiology and Chemistry from San Francisco State University.

Fiona Mack is currently Vice President, Head of Bayer Co.Lab Cambridge, US, which is a part of the Business Development & Licensing / Open Innovation function. In this role, she is building a new cell and gene therapy incubator to accelerate innovation within the field.

Prior to join Bayer, as Head of JLABS@ TMC, Fiona was responsible for external engagement, innovation sourcing, company onboarding, portfolio management, operational excellence, educational programming, and P&L. She catalyzed and supported the translation of science and technology into valuable solutions for patients and consumers across the pharmaceutical, medical device, consumer, and healthtech sectors.

Fiona has held senior leadership positions at Ipsen, Roche and Pfizer supporting external innovation efforts to expand Rare Disease, Neuroscience and Oncology portfolios.

Fiona earned her Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and her undergraduate degree in Biology from Cornell University. Her innovative work has been published in high impact journals and she also has several granted patents.

Xavier de Mollerat du Jeu is the Director of R&D for Cell Biology and Transfection at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Dr. de Mollerat du Jeu works on creating and improving nucleic acid delivery for research and therapeutic applications. He identified new DNA delivery approaches for hard to transfect cell lines and primary and stem cells, and he is the inventor of Lipofectamine 3000. Dr. de Mollerat du Jeu’s team is also focusing on new delivery solutions for CRISPR delivery, new scalable lentiviral production systems, mechanical delivery approaches for primary T cells, and in vivo delivery of RNAi and mRNA for research and therapeutic application. He studied molecular biology and plant physiology at the University of Montpellier II in France, and received his PhD in human genetics from Clemson University. Dr. de Mollerat du Jeu’s thesis work involved identifying the genes responsible for Split Hand/Split Foot Malformation 3. His post-doctoral fellowship research was in the laboratory of Dr. Michael G. Rosenfeld at UCSD, where he studied the roles of microRNAs in pituitary gland development.

Josh earned his BS in Biochemistry from Ohio Northern University, and MS and PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University. After graduate school, Josh completed a postdoc in Neuroscience Chemical Biology at Pfizer in Cambridge, Massachusetts (MA), and has been active in the biotech community since then. After Pfizer, Josh joined Thermo Fisher Scientific, where he has been for over 7 years holding various life science-focused technical roles and is currently the Eastern MA Cell & Gene Therapy Business Development Manager.