Steven Deeks, MD

Steven G. Deeks, MD, is a Professor of Medicine in Residence at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a faculty member in the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Deeks has been engaged in HIV research and clinical care since 1993. He is a recognized expert on HIV-associated immune dysfunction and its impact on HIV persistence (the “reservoir”) and health during anti retroviral therapy. Dr. Deeks has published over 500 peer-review articles, editorials and invited reviews on these and related topics. He is the recipient of several NIH grants, and one of the principal investigators of DARE (the Delaney AIDS Research Enterprise), which is an NIH-funded international Collaboratory aimed at developing therapeutic interventions to cure HIV infection. He a member of the Board of Directors for the UCSF-based The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) Institute for HIV Cure Research. He is the co-chair of the “Towards an HIV Cure” International Working Group and a former co-chair of the NIH Office of AIDS Research Toward a Cure Planning Group. He was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and Association of American Physicians (AAP), and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for Science Translational Medicine and the Advisory Board of EBio Medicine. In addition to his clinical and translational investigation, Dr. Deeks maintains a primary care clinic for HIV infected patients. He is a former member of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council (ORAC) and of the Department on Health and Human Services Panel on Anti retroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents.

Mr. Joseph DeAngelo is a founding Scientist of BioSavita. Mr. DeAngelo is also the founder and CEO of Cereva Biotechnology Corp whose mission is to engineer yeast for the production of animal feed and human food. Mr. DeAngelo is an inventor of several issued patents on yeast technology and nitric oxide biology. His work on genetic engineering of yeast is focused on the expression of heterologous proteins, secretion, and post-translational modification, particularly on glycosylation. After Mr. DeAngelo’s graduation from MIT, he co-founded a yeast biotechnology company, Strohtech/Apex Bioscience that focused on yeast production of recombinant hemoglobin for use as a blood substitute. There he led a group of 40 scientists, including groups in molecular biology, fermentation, and downstream processing. He was Vice-president of Research and Chief Scientific Officer for Apex Bioscience, the US subsidiary of Curacyte AG and a member of Curacyte Vorstand. Under his direction, Apex’s lead product, PHP, a hemoglobin-based nitric oxide scavenger, was developed from pre-phase 1 to phase 3 clinical trials. He was a shareholder’s technical liaison in Delta Biotechnology, a UK company that developed a process for the secretion of recombinant serum albumin in yeast. Delta went on to develop HSA fusion proteins. One of which, Albuferon, was developed by Human Genome Sciences. Mr. DeAngelo received both his undergraduate and graduate training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Michael Feldhaus has extensive experience building biotech companies from ground zero into fully integrated teams delivering biologics to the clinic. He is inventor of several patents on antibody discovery, humanization, and development. He is expert in S. cevervisiae yeast display technology, and he developed 3 antibody discovery platforms in Saccharomyces yeast at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and at Adimab LLC. Dr. Feldhaus’s career development over the last 20 years emphasized antibody discovery, optimization and humanization with a focus toward clinical development of these entities. He managed multiple projects through GMP cell line development. He has also played key roles in engineering bi-specific antibodies, cytokine Fc fusions, and CART receptors. He has expertise in Project Management, Business Development, Technology Transfer, Preclinical Development of biologics and continues to be key in moving projects forward for Vaccine development at BioSavita. Analytical assessment of characteristics of biologics for clinical development is crucial in understanding the protein properties of biologics. Antibody discovery, protein engineering, expression/production in yeast, HEK and CHO all help develop new tools and systems to produce novel biologics. Developing antibody discovery systems for industrial use, designing and building synthetic and natural immune libraries both required attention to detail and understanding the requirements of industry that differ significantly from an academic setting. Dr. Feldhaus is currently an advisor to multiple biologics companies including a company for (GM-CSF) LEUKINE production in yeast.

Prof. Fred Winston is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He is an expert in the areas of yeast genetics, transcriptional control, and chromatin structure. Prof. Winston began studies of yeast genetics and molecular biology as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Gerald Fink. For over 20 years, his laboratory at Harvard has used yeast genetics to identify and study proteins critical for normal gene expression. These pioneering studies have led to several new insights concerning the roles of general transcription factors, chromatin remodeling complexes, histone proteins, and transcription elongation. Prof. Winston has been advisor for Dr. Motwani’s scientific team at Apex Bioscience and later at BioSavita. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Javaud is expert in glycobiology of S. cerevisiae yeast. He was co-founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of GlycodeS.A.S. (France), a VC funded innovative startup company focused on generating yeast with humanized glyco-engineering to produce homogenous glycosylation of therapeutic products. He is a co- inventor of three patents in glyco-engineering of yeast. He was successful in licensing deals with major international biopharma companies. He received his Ph. D. in Molecular Biotechnology from University of Limoges in France and his Executive MBA at HEC School of Management (Paris)/Babson College (Boston) with focus on Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Currently, Dr. Christophe Javaud is in charge of strategic alliance management at Gustave Roussy Cancer Centre, the premier European Cancer Centre. 

Dr. Bramhill has over 25 years of experience as a senior scientist, team leader, licensing executive and project director in major pharma, biotech and investment funds.

Dr. Bramhill has expertise in virus biology (SARS, HIV, Influenza), vaccine discovery and development, antibody drug conjugates, bi-specific antibodies, antibody display technologies, and peptide conjugation. At Merck, he helped establish the antibody discovery department, evaluating all technologies from discovery through manufacture of antibodies. He managed numerous out-licensing programs at RCT, covering platform biologics technologies, including Pichia yeast expression technology, and specific products including Shingrivax.

Since 2004, when Dr. Bramhill became an independent consultant, he has been recruited to conduct 1 or 2 day workshops at many international conferences, as well as in-house courses at worldwide biopharma companies. He has reviewed programs at major biopharma as a KOL on antibody technologies and related biologics, and helped numerous start-up companies develop cutting edge biologics products and technologies.

He received his BA and MA from Cambridge University (UK) and Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (UK). He completed postdoctoral research at Stanford University under Nobel Laureate Prof. Arthur Kornberg.