Upcoming Webinars
Please join us on November 18, 2025 at Noon Eastern Standard Time (EST) for the International Biomanufacturing Network (iBioNE) webinar series featuring Peter Zandstra, the Director of the University of British Columbia's (UBC) School of Biomedical Engineering. His work integrates engineering design principles, computational modeling, and stem cell biology to enhance our fundamental understanding of cell fate control mechanisms. His research focuses on developing new and accessible therapeutic approaches for disease treatment, particularly using cells from the blood-forming system to treat cancer and autoimmunity. His education includes a Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) in Chemical Engineering from McGill University, a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology from UBC, and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Bioengineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Key discoveries from his lab include scalable suspension manufacturing of pluripotent stem cells and their derivatives, engineering an artificial thymic niche for clinically relevant ex vivo T-cell development, and elucidating fundamental mechanisms in human multicellular tissue pattern formation. Zandstra has received broad recognition for his work, including being named a Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in Engineering.
Register for the Engineering Immune System Development webinar.
Past Webinars
The October 21, 2025 webinar featured Jae-Hyuck Shim, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Associate Professor at UMass Chan Medical School and Director of the Bone Analysis Core and Musculoskeletal Gene Therapy Program, a leading researcher developing novel gene therapies for rare skeletal diseases including fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP). He presented Advancing novel genetic medicine for Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP, OMIM 135100) is an ultra-rare genetic disorder characterized by heterotopic ossification (HO) in soft connective tissues, with no effective treatment or prevention. Approximately 97% of patients carry a heterozygous activating mutation (c.617G>A; p.R206H) in ACVR1, which alters BMP signaling and primes tissues for inflammation-induced ossification. Since ACVR1 is an essential gene, only allele-specific targeting of the mutant transcript offers a viable therapeutic strategy, complicating drug development using conventional therapeutic classes. This study introduces new genetic medicine platforms, recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) and small interfering RNA (siRNA) for systemic, combinatorial treatment, forming a foundation for developing disease-modifying therapies for FOP. More broadly, it offers hope to patients suffering from FOP and other musculoskeletal disorders.
The September 23, 2025 webinar featured Alan Dickson, Professor of Biotechnology in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Manchester, based in The Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. He presented Engineering improvements into biomanufacturing platforms: A complex jigsaw without any instructions? Engineering biology pervades the biomanufacturing sector and offers us the potential to improve cells, products and processes to maximize the yields and quality of valuable therapeutics. The molecular engineering tools are at hand but the where, how and when to apply them is compromised by the autoregulatory and compensatory processes by which complex cell factories maintain their homeostasis. The understanding that we need is going to have to be learnt from the lessons of nature. In this presentation, Professor Dickson described case studies of his team's work on transcriptional reprogramming of Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell lines to generate recombinant antibodies and discuss how these generic principles have wider applications throughout biomanufacturing.
The August 19, 2025 webinar featured Meiyappan Lakshmanan, who focused on systematizing CHO cell based biotherapeutic manufacturing. Using a multi-omics approach, Meiyappan Lakshmanan's research utilizes multi-omics datasets on CHO cell lines to computationally identify ideal genomic sites and design vector constructs for targeted gene editing. Apart from multi- omic data driven CHO cell line development, his group also use computational models, built based on first principles as well as statistics/ML to mathematically represent the CHO cell-based bioprocesses. They particularly build models representing the metabolism, post translational machinery and N-glycosylation and deploy these to design/develop cell culture media.
The July 22, 2025 webinar featured Anurag S. Rathore, Ph.D., The Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing 4.0 webinar focused on technologies and approaches that will enable Next-Generation manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals. Case studies were presented to showcase the various elements that are foundational for this transition. These include digital twins of biopharmaceutical unit operations and processes, mechanistic modeling, real-time process monitoring, statistical process control, model-based control, and risk assessment.
The May 21, 2024 webinar featured Tim Charlebois, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) and Guangping Gao, Ph.D., Professor at UMass Chan Medical School and moderated by Christina Alves, Ph.D., head of US Biologics Process Development at Takeda. The panelists discussed current gene therapy challenges and the future of the field.
The November 30, 2023 webinar featured Cleo Kontoravdi from BioProNet2 and Dong-Yup Lee from Korean-National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) presenting on modelling of biotherapeutics manufacturing processes.
The September 26, 2023 webinar featured Jonathan Bones presenting on the NIBRT.
The June 20, 2023 webinar featured Nicole Borth presenting on the Austrian Center of Industrial Biotechnology (ACIB).
The May 23, 2023 webinar featured Paula Alves presenting on the Institute of Experimental Biology and Technology (iBET) and European Society for Animal Cell Technology (ESACT).