Removing barriers to oligonucleotide scalability: novel platforms, processes, and commercial readiness

Barrie Cassey is a pharmaceutical and biotechnology technical leader with over 25 years of experience spanning process development, sterile manufacturing, technology transfer, and delivering innovation. Currently running his own consultancy, Invox, Barrie most recently served as Technology Lead for Medicines Manufacturing at the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), where he built and led multi-functional teams and secured over £40 million in funding for cutting-edge oligonucleotide and peptide manufacturing projects.

Prior to CPI, Barrie held senior leadership roles at GSK, including Commercial and Site Technical Director, where he oversaw complex technology transfers, multi-million pound capital investment programmes, and international supply chain strategy. His career reflects a consistent track record of using innovation to address commercial challenges — from biocatalysis and solvent nanofiltration to large-scale sterile pharmaceutical manufacturing. 

Barrie holds a PhD in Biotechnology and Molecular Biology from the University of Sheffield and a First Class BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Birmingham.

Fred Briones is an experienced leader in nucleic acid therapeutics with over a decade of experience spanning research, process development, and global manufacturing. Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, he earned his doctorate degree from Emory University and completed postdoctoral research at Texas A&M University and AstraZeneca R&D in Waltham, Massachusetts. He has contributed to the advancement of innovative genetic medicines at Moderna, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, and Tessera Therapeutics across multiple therapeutic platforms.

He currently serves as Senior Director of CMC at City Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company engineering the future of RNAi-based medicine and advancing the next generation of RNAi therapeutics. In this role, he leads strategic and technical efforts to translate cutting-edge RNAi science into robust development and manufacturing programs.

Peter has worked at AZ since 2002, in a variety of chemistry-focussed roles. During the earlier part of his career, he worked on the synthetic side of medicinal chemistry, supporting a number of projects across both inflammation and oncology disease areas, based in the Alderley Park research site. He subsequently spent several years in a non-GMP Kilo lab environment, delivering drug substance materials for use in pivotal non-clinical dose-ranging studies, from where the natural progression was to move into Chemical Development at the neighbouring AZ Macclesfield campus. 

After joining Chemical Development in 2014, where he worked on a variety of “traditional” early-phase small molecule projects, Peter took on a new role in 2016 as Oligonucleotide chemistry lead in the Early Chemical Development department within the newly-formed Pharmaceutical Sciences function. Peter held this position for a number of years, leading the chemical development aspects of several Ph1 and Ph2 therapeutic oligo projects, until early 2023 when Peter took on his current role as Director, New Modalities Chemistry where he leads the early-phase development of all AZ’s therapeutic peptide, oligonucleotide and ADC drug-linker projects, in addition to other non-standard elements such as novel targeting ligands, ionizable lipids etc.

Peter is an active collaborator, being involved through his whole career in a variety of external academic collaborations, with efforts in recent years heavily focused on biocatalytic applications for oligonucleotide synthesis, and he is also an active collaborator in the EPOC (European Pharmaceutical Oligonucleotide Consortium), being co-author on 2 EPOC positions papers (Starting Material considerations and Microbiological considerations in oligo manufacturing).

Michael Delaney is a Senior Principal Scientist in RNAi Chemical Development at Novo Nordisk and is part of a larger team that is driving oligonucleotide API development and manufacturing innovation.  He has 25 years of experience with oligonucleotides focused on modified nucleoside/nucleic acid synthesis, phophoramidite development, and biosynthetic pathways to produce oligonucleotides.  His current focus is on technologies and processes that increase sustainability and scalability oligonucleotides.