Interviews
Experts from pharma industry share their opinions and viewpoints on important issues relating to new trends, technologies, management insights and strategies in this section.
Peering into the Future
Rimjhim Agrawal
Co-founder and CTO, BrainSightAI
Dr. Rimjhim Agrawal, Co-founder and CTO of BrainSightAI, has expertise in neuroscience and machine learning to solve complex challenges in this field. Her Ph.D. in psychiatry, coupled with a strong focus on AI in neuroscience, drove early research into utilising AI to gain deeper insights into complex psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and OCD. Her research has resulted in significant contributions, including 9 patents and over 10 publications in prestigious journals like Nature. Her expertise translates into innovative solutions like brain mapping, which is currently assisting clinicians in surgical procedures and treatment planning. Driven by a vision to enhance healthcare through improved brain health awareness, Dr. Agrawal excels at translating knowledge of the brain into cutting-edge AI solutions. The company has lots of awards and accolades while Dr. Agrawal has been featured in Forbes India twice.
Breaking Bottlenecks in Continuous Biomanufacturing
Shireen Goh
Associate Professor, Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology & Research (SUTD)
Shireen Goh, Scientific Co-Founder of Celltomix and Associate Professor at SUTD, is pioneering dense-suspension microfluidics to enable clog-free continuous biomanufacturing. Her earlier work co-developed the Erbi micro-bioreactor, acquired by Merck, underscoring her track record in academic translation.
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MAb Aggregation: A Problem Within the Biopharmaceutical Industry
K. H. Mok
Associate Professor, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Educated at Seoul National University, UC Berkeley, and Purdue University with postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, K.H. Mok specializes in utilising biomolecular NMR spectroscopy to protein folding-misfolding-aggregation research. Co-author of publications in Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Immunology, PNAS and others, he currently serves as a Eureka Independent Evaluation Panel member, technical consultant to start-up companies LMNTIC Biotech and Meta-Flux, and editorial board member for three peer-reviewed journals.
Exploring New Molecular Targets for Anti-cancer Therapy
Amil Shah
Clinical Professor, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia
Amil Shah is Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. His practice focusses on gastrointestinal and lung cancers. Among his administrative/academic roles, he chaired the Gastrointestinal Tumour Group at BC Cancer, and served as Associate Dean of the Vancouver-Fraser Medical Program at UBC. His research interest is the molecular pathogenesis of cancer.
Mitochondrial “swap” in the Tumor Microenvironment
Yosuke Togashi
Professor, Okayama University
Yosuke Togashi, M.D., Ph.D., is a Professor at Okayama University, specializing in tumor microenvironment research. He trained in respiratory medicine, earned his Ph.D. in genome biology, and began cancer immunology research in 2016.
Ensuring Ethics in AI-Driven Drug Safety
Ashish Jain
Senior Director of Pharmacovigilance and Risk Management at Curis Inc.
Ashish Jain is Senior Director of Pharmacovigilance and Risk Management at Curis Inc., with over 12 years of experience in drug safety. He is also leading the Innovation Working Group at the North American Society of Pharmacovigilance (NASoP), his expertise in combining technological innovation with patient safety makes him uniquely qualified to address the ethical challenges of AI implementation in pharmacovigilance. His article focuses on developing frameworks for ethical AI implementation in healthcare.
mRNA Platforms as Diagnostics and Therapeutics for Human Infertility Treatments
Junaid Kashir
Associate Professor, Department of Biology, Khalifa University
Junaid Kashir is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Khalifa University and
has previously chaired multiple research/administrative committees. He has been heavily
involved in multiple programs for training graduate clinical embryology students. Dr. Kashirs
research aims to develop therapeutic/diagnostic interventions to treat infertility and understand
embryology.
Knowledge Gain Through High Parallel Bioprocess Setups
Sebastian Kleebank
Product Life Cycle Manager, Eppendorf AG
Sebastian Kleebank studied Bioengineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Juelich, followed by his Ph.D. at the RWTH Aachen, Institute for Molecular Biotechnology. In his actual position as a Product Life Cycle Manager at Eppendorf AG, Business Unit Bioprocess, he is responsible for the small-scale product portfolio. During his 12 years in the bioprocess industry, he gained a lot of experience in small scale upstream process development, including several years working in the lab.
Innovation Management at Bachem
Günther Loidl
Chief Technology Officer, Bachem Holding AG
Günther Loidl joined Bachem in 2000. He held several functions in Research and Development (R&D) and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Manufacturing and became Vice President R&D in 2012. Since 2015, he is CTO of the Bachem Group and a member of the Corporate Executive Committee. He studied chemistry in Regensburg (Germany) and Leeds (UK) and obtained his doctorate under the supervision of Luis Moroder at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried (Germany).
Merck
Karen Chan
Staff Engineer, Manufacturing Science and Technology, South East Asia
Karen Chan is a process engineer at Merck Pte Ltd. Chan has six years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and two years of experience in research & development. She provides technical support in areas such as process development, troubleshooting and technical training for downstream processes. Chan holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from the National University of Singapore.
