Current Gene Therapy

Dr. Ignacio Anegon did his postdoctoral work in the Immunology Department of the University Hospital of Barcelona between 1982 and 1985. His research was on the generation and characterization of monoclonal antibodies against human leukocytes as well as application of cytofluorimetry and monoclonal antibodies for typing human leukemias and lymphomas. He is now Director of Research at the INSERM, Director of the INSERM unit 1064 and scientific director of the Nantes Rat Transgenesis ImmunoPhenomic platform. He has published more than 222 papers, edited 3 books and is Editor-in-chief of the journal Current Gene Therapy.

Dr. Lewin received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and received postdoctoral training at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Since 1994, he has worked on gene therapy for treatment for retinitis pigmentosa. He is also developing gene and drug therapies for age-related macular degeneration. Currently, Dr. Lewin is Shaler-Richardson Professor of Ophthalmic Sciences and is Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Florida. He was awarded the Board of Directors Award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness and received the Elisabeth Anderson Macular Degeneration Research Award from the BrightFocus Foundation.

Dr. Hao Lin is a Professor of the Center for Informational Biology at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He received his PhD from Inner Mongolia University, P.R. China in 2007. His research focused on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. He has published over 110 peer-reviewed papers in SCI-indexed journals.

Quan Zou received the BSc, MSc and the PhD degrees in computer science from Harbin Institute of Technology, China, in 2004, 2007 and 2009, respectively. He is currently a professor in the Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. His research is in the areas of bioinformatics, machine learning and parallel computing. Several related works have been published by Science, Briefings in Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, etc. Google scholar showed that his more than 200 papers have been cited more than 8000 times. He is the editor-in-chief of Current Bioinformatics, associate editor of IEEE Access, Frontiers in Genetics, Frontiers in Plant Science, and the editor board member of Computers in Biology and Medicine, Computational Biology and Chemistry, Genes, Scientific Reports, etc. He was selected as one of the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers in 2018, 2019.

Cristina Fillat obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain and did a postdoctoral stage at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in N.Y. USA. Currently Dr. Fillat leads a research group in Gene Therapy and Cancer at IDIBAPS, Barcelona. She has contributed with scientific papers with more than 90 publications. She was among the team members that promote the constitution of the Spanish Society of Gene and Cell Therapy and served as Scientific Secretary.

Antonia Follenzi: She is an Associate professor of Histology at the University of Piemonte Orientale “A. Avogadro”, Novara (Italy). She has extensive expertise in lentiviral vector technology, liver research, bone marrow (BM) cell transplantation and gene transfer. She has applied her expertise to the functional characterization and the role of liver sinusoidal endothelial cells and BM cells to correct the bleeding phenotype in a mouse model of hemophilia A. She is an expert on transcriptional regulation of transgenes in lentiviral vectors using cell specific promoters.

Carine Giovannangeli graduated in Physics from Ecole Normale Supérieure (Lyon) and got her PhD in Biophysics (University Paris VI, Paris) in 1992 on biophysical and biological characterization of unusual nucleic acid structures under the supervision of Claude Hélène. Afterwards she was hired by CNRS in 1992 and spent some years at the Institut Pasteur working on HIV and inhibitory strategies based on nucleic acids targeting the viral genome. During the last few years at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris) she focused on optimizing genome editing methods using TALE proteins and CRISPR/Cas9 system by characterizing the DNA repair mechanisms associated with nuclease driven genome modifications and providing resources in the field (TACGENE Facility).

Prof. Haisma earned his Ph.D. in 1987 at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. He worked as scientist for the biotech company Centocor Inc. Malvern PA, USA (1985-1986), Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Boston MA, USA (1986-1987), and as instructor at Harvard Medical School, Boston MA, USA (1986-1987). From 1987-1997. He is a professor at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Haisma is member of the board of the Dutch Society of Gene and Cell Therapy and a former member of the board of the European Society for Gene- and Cell Therapy. In addition, he is member of the Gene and Cell Doping Expert Group of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Dr. Yu-Chen Hu received his BS degree in Chemical Engineering from National Taiwan University (1992) and earned his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Maryland (USA) in 1999. Dr. Hu’s main research interests include vaccine development, gene therapy, tissue engineering, cancer therapy and synthetic biology. Dr. Hu has won the Asia Research Award, Outstanding Research Award, BEST Biochemical Engineering Achievement Award, Wu Ta-You Memorial Award (NSC), Outstanding Academia-Industry Research Award and Outstanding Young Investigator Award in Taiwan. He is inducted as a fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and is elected the Member of the Tissue Engineering International & Regenerative Medicine Society-Asia Pacific (TERMIS-AP) Council and the Vice President of Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering Society of Taiwan.

Dr Pitard received his Ph.D from Paris University for his work on membrane protein reconstitution into liposomes in CEA Saclay and Institut Curie. He started his career in 1995 at Rhône-Poulenc Rorer (now Sanofi) on the Gene Therapy program. Then, he worked at Sanofi-Pasteur on the DNA vaccine program. He is Scientific Director at Centre National de la Recherche Scientific (CNRS)/Univerity of Nantes (France). He has invented new concepts for the intracellular delivery of complex drugs including nucleic acids and proteins. He has contributed to more than 80 publications and 17 patents on nucleic acids and protein formulations and is Associate Editor of the journal “Current Gene Therapy” published by Bentham science Publishers. He has been a member of the scientific advisory board of the French cystic fibrosis foundation “Vaincre La Mucoviscidose” (Paris, France), He created and launched with a Nobel Laureate the Biopharmaceutical company InCellArt.

Dr. Liang Qiao is currently a principal research fellow and an Associate Professor in the Storr Liver Centre at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, the University of Sydney. Dr. Qiao also serves as an editor for other international journals (Cancer Letters, World J Gastroenterol, Abdomen, Anti-Cancer Agents in Medicinal Chemistry, Anal Cell Pathol, etc.). He regularly reviews manuscripts for several international journals (Oncotarget, Int J Nanomed, J Hepatol, Stem Cell Dev, J Gastroenterol Hepatol, Liver International, etc). He is a member of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), a member of the Australian Society for Stem Cell Research (ASSCR).

Dr. Rols obtained a Ph.D. in Cellular Biophysics in 1989 from the University of Toulouse, France. Her research interests lie in the fields of molecules electrotransfer in cells and tissues. She is involved in different aspects including the mechanisms of membrane electropermeabilization, DNA electrotransfer, as well as biomedical applications for cancer treatment and gene therapy. She has published more than 120 scientific publications. She is currently Director of Research at the CNRS and Group leader at the Institute for Biophysics and Structural Biology, Toulouse, France. Dr. Rols is the secretary of the French Society for Nanomedicine and Board Member of the International Society for Electroporation-Based Technologies and Treatments (ISEBTT).

Mark is a Principal Investigator at the Cork Cancer Research Centre at University College Cork, Ireland His interests include the development of tumour-specific delivery technology utilising bacteria and the study of the relationships between bacteria and cancer. He is a council member of several gene therapy and cancer-related international and national societies, and a member of the editorial board of several international journals. Mark is an associate editor of Current Gene Therapy.

Dr. Yao is an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. He did his post.doc training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School. He is the sole inventor of 6 issued Patent Applications, including the tetracycline gene switch technology, trademarked as T-REx by Invitrogen/Life Technologies, which has has been used and cited in more than 4,000 publications and hundreds of patent applications. Using this gene switch technology, Dr. Yao has established several unique approaches for genetic engineering novel recombinant viruses for clinical applications in the fields of infectious diseases, cancers, and neural regeneration.

Dr. Zhi-Yao obtained his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from Sichuan University and did his postdoctoral training on cancer gene therapy using non-viral vectors at Sichuan University. Meanwhile, he was also a visiting scholar at University of Pennsylvania for AAV gene therapy of genetic diseases during his postdoctoral. Dr. Zhi-Yao research interest is in the area of gene therapy (using different technologies and gene delivery using viral or non-viral vectors). Dr. Zhi-Yao has published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles so far.

My expertise is in translational research, as well basic science development of gene transfer technologies. I have spent my career critically evaluating the latter, and their potential for use in multiple genetic diseases, as well infectious diseases and cancers. I have served as PI on multiple projects (funded by NIH, private foundations, and corporate entities) ranging from basic investigations, preclinical studies, as well I have co-led human clinical trials that eventuated in FDA approved biologic therapies. Viral vector based gene transfer technologies developed in our laboratories are currently in multiple clinical trials. My expertise as both a scientist and as a fully licensed physician, assists in my role as a reviewer for CGT.

Assumpció Bosch obtained a PhD in Biosciences at the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona (UAB) and did her postdoctoral training on gene therapy strategies using viral vectors at the University of Iowa (IA, USA) and at the Pasteur Institute (Paris, France). Currently she is as Associate Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and group leader at the Neuroscience Institute (UAB) mainly focused on gene therapy strategies for diseases affecting the nervous system, both central and peripheral. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, leaded national and European research projects and co-founded two biotech companies on the gene therapy field.

Giuseppina Carbone obtained MD degree and completed her clinical residency at the University of Naples Medical School. In 1988 she moved to the USA and trained in basic research at Wake Forest University Medical Center (Winston-Salem, NC) in the Department of Physiology Pharmacology. From 1994 she was senior fellow at the Hollings Cancer Center in the Department of Experimental Oncology of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC. In 2001 she was appointed as Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. In July 2003 she joined the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR) in Bellinzona as Group Leader for the Prostate Cancer Biology unit.

Chemical Engineer, 1971, Univ. Porto; Master of Sciences (1975) and PhD in (1979) Environmental Engineering, Imperial College of Science and Technology, U. London; Habilitation in, Biochemical Engineering (1991), NOVA-Univ. Nova de Lisboa. Full Professor, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, NOVA- Univ. Nova de Lisboa (1995-present). Founder (1988), earlier president and CEO (currently vice –president) of iBET – Institute for Experimental and Technological Biology (www.ibet.pt). Published over 230 papers in refereed international journals; Associate-Editor of Journal of Biotechnology, member of the editorial board of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Current Gene Therapy and Biotechnology Letters; referee of Biotechnology Progress, Cytotechnology, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Enzyme and Microbial Biotechnology.

Dr. Chieh Chang received Ph.D. in Biology from California Institute of Technology. Chang was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow and performed his postdoctoral work at Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco & Rockefeller University. During 2006 to 2014, he held faculty positions at McGill University, and at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Research Foundation. Dr. Chang is the recipient of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Leaders Opportunity Award, the Whitehall Foundation Research Award, and the March of Dimes Foundation Research Program Award. His lab is currently supported by a NIH RO1 grant and a NSF grant, and a Whitehall Foundation grant.

Dr. Xing Chen is a Professor of China University of Mining and Technology and Founding Director of the Institute of Bioinformatics, China University of Mining and Technology. He is named Highly Cited Researcher for 2019. He serves as an Associate Editor and Editorial Board Member for academic journals such as Briefings in Functional Genomics, International Journal of Biological Sciences, Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Systems Biology, and International Journal of Biological Sciences. In recent years, he has published 116 SCI journal papers in well-reputed journals.

Prof. Wei Chen received his PhD degree in Theoretical Biophysics from Inner Mongolia University in 2010. Currently, he is a full-time Professor at Center for Genomics and Computational Biology in North China University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on Computational Genomics and Computational Epigenetics. So far, he has published more than 110 academic peer review papers. Prof. Chen was awarded the “Highly Cited Researcher” in the field of Biology & Biochemistry by Clarivate Analytics in 2018. At present, he serves as the Deputy Editor of Molecular Therapy-Nucleic Acids, an Editorial Board Member of Current Bioinformatics, the Guest Editor of Current Genomics, and Reviewer for Nature Communications, Nucleic Acids Research, Bioinformatics, Briefings in Bioinformatics, etc.

Dr. Lei Chen is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Shanghai Maritime University. He obtained his PhD from East China Normal University, China, in 2010. His research interest includes bioinformatics, computational biology, proteomics, and genomics. Up till now, he has published over 150 refereed papers. Currently, he serves as anEditorial Board Member for Current Gene Therapy journal and Current Bioinformatics whereas he is the Section Editor for Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening and Current Proteomics.

Dr. Cui obtained an M.D. degree from Harbin Medical University in China and a Ph.D. degree from Kindai University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan. Dr. Cui is currently a Research Scientist at the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Cui received training in both clinical medicine and basic research, and has intensely studied skin and skeletal muscle for many years.

Dr. Hui Ding is an Associate Professor of Center for Informational Biology at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. She received her PhD from Inner Mongolia University, P.R. China in 2009. Her research is in the areas of Systems Biology and theoretical biology. She has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers in SCI-indexed journals.

Dr. Dong obtained M.D. and Ph.D. from Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China. Currently Dr. Dong is the dean of college of biomedical engineering, and the director of department of biomedical materials science, Third Military Medical University. He has published more than 50 articles in the field of bone biology and tissue engineering bone. His research interests included the pathogenesis and gene regulation mechanism of osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and bone metastasis of tumors.

Dr. Qiongzhu Dong is a Professor of Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University. She obtained her PhD from Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University in 2009. After that, she joined Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University as a faculty member. She had gotten further training for targeted therapy of liver cancer in MD Anderson Cancer Center from April 2015 to July 2016 as a visiting scientist. Over the past ten years, she has focused on basic studying on cancer, especially the mechanism of cancer progression and its clinical implications.

Dr. Pu-Feng Du is an associate professor of College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University. He receives his Ph. D. from Bioinformatics Division of Tsinghua National Laboratory of Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University. He began to work as an assistant professor in Tianjin University since 2010. He was promoted to associate professor in 2014. In 2013, he worked as a visiting postdoc fellow in the Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, under the Hong Kong Scholar Programs. His research interest includes computational analysis of biological sequences, computational prediction of functional attributes genes, analysis of heterogeneous biological networks and developing efficient algorithms and software implementations for computational biology. He has published over 40 academic papers in the area of bioinformatics, computational biology and pattern recognition.

Anja Ehrhardt studied biology at the Universities Göttingen and Hamburg in Germany and received her Ph.D. in 1998 from the University of Hannover in Germany. From 1999 to 2005 she was a postdoctoral fellow and research associate at the Stanford University where she started to work on gene therapeutic approaches for genetic diseases. She established her own research group at the LMU Munich in Germany in 2005 and became a full professor in 2011 at the Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. Her current research focus is on adenovirus based gene therapeutic approaches to combat genetic and infectious diseases.

Abeer F. El Nahas is currently a professor of Genetics and Genetic Engineering. She received her Ph.D. degree in 2001 from Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Alexandria University, Egypt after a fellowship at Hokkaido University, Japan. Her research has mainly focused on the animal genetics, gene expression, immunogenetics, and genotoxicity. She has published many peer-reviewed articles and has contributed to several national and international. She is the Editor in Chief of Alexandria Journal of Veterinary Sciences. A reviewer at Fish & Shellfish Immunology, Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, Journal of Thermal biology, Poultry Science, Andrologia, Journal of Fish physiology and biochemistry, Environmental toxicology and pharmacology, Environmental Pollution, Indian Journal of pharmaceutical Sciences and others.

Alberto L. Epstein, born in Buenos Aires in 1947, is director of research emeritus of CNRS. ALE is a molecular virologist with wide expertise in genetics of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and development of HSV-1-based vectors for gene transfer and gene therapy. He is currently working at University of Versailles Saint Quentin in Yvelines, France, where he is a holder of the HandiMedEx chair of excellence, whose mission is to generate and evaluate neurotropic vectors for gene therapy of peripheral neuron-associated disorders.

Dr. Zhaohui Gong has completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China in 2006. His research interest focuses on developing the DNA/RNA vaccine for cancer gene therapy and the RNA therapeutics in lung cancer. He has received many awards/honors and published more than 50 academic papers in peer-reviewed journals. Currently he is working as a Professor of Molecular Oncology and Vice Dean of Medical School of Ningbo University.

CB Gurumurthy is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He is also the Director of the UNMC’s Mouse Genome Engineering Core Facility. He is a co- developer of popular mouse genome engineering technologies such as Easi (Efficient additions with ssDNA-inserts)-CRISPR, CRISPR-first: PITT-next and GONAD (Genome Editing via Oviductal Nucleic Acids Delivery). Some of these technologies have been adapted in hundreds of laboratories worldwide. He is one of the six outstanding investigators of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s inaugural Genomic Innovator award.

Roland W. Herzog, PhD, is a Professor of Pediatrics, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Florida (UF). He received a PhD in Microbiology from Auburn University in 1996, followed by postdoctoral training at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Herzog joined the UF gene therapy program in 2005. He has been appointed treasurer of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, editor-in-chief of Molecular Therapy Methods & Clinical Development, and UF Research Foundation Professor. Dr. Herzog’s research focuses on gene therapy for hemophilia, AAV vectors, and immune tolerance.

Jinming Hu obtained his BS degree from Hefei University of Technology in 2007. He earned his PhD degree from University of Science and Technology of China under the supervision of Prof. Shiyong Liu in 2012. Since 2013, he has conducted postdoctoral training with Prof. Thomas P Davis in the University of New South Wales and Monash University, respectively. He was appointed as a research staff at University of Science and Technology of China in 2016 and was promoted to professor in 2017. He has published over 90 SCI papers and has an H-index of 38. His research focuses on the synthesis, self-assembly, and biomedical applications of gasotransmitter-responsive materials.

Dr. Tao Huang is an Associate Professor at Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He completed his Post-doctoral research at Department of Genetics and Genomics Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, USA. His research interests include bioinformatics, computational biology, systems genetics and big data research. He has published over 150 articles in well-reputed journals.

Yue-Wern Huang studied biology at National Taiwan Normal University and received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Michigan State Universityfor two years. He established his own research at Missouri University of Science and Technology in 2000 and became a full professor in 2012. His current research focuses on investigation of toxicity of pharmaceuticals and environmental chemicals and development of nanocarrier platforms to deliver biologically active molecules in vitro and in vivo.

Zoltán Ivics received his PhD in molecular biology from University of Minnesota in the USA and the Netherlands Cancer Institute.He was appointed as Head of Division at the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Langen, Germany, in 2011. He received recognition of the “Molecule of the Year” in 2009 for developing a hyperactive Sleeping Beauty transposase that opened the door for clinical applications. He has been serving as Member of the Board of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ESGCT) and as a faculty member of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy of the LOEWE (Landes-Offensive zur Entwicklung Wissenschaftlich-ökonomischer Exzellenz) program in Hessen, Germany.

Dr. Marcelo Bispo de Jesus is Group Leader of Nano-cell Interactions Lab. at University of Campinas, Brazil. He received his Ph.D. in cell biology at the University of Groningen. Dr de Jesus was granted the Young Investigators Awards FAPESP, before taking up a position at the University of Campinas. In his current position, Dr de Jesus leads a multidisciplinary team working in the field of gene delivery and nanotoxicology.

Dr. Jia obtained his Ph.D. from School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, China in 2004. After Ph. D. study, he went to Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA, as a visiting scientist from 2005 to 2010. He was promoted to Full Professor in 2012 at Wuhan University. Dr. Jia’s research interests mainly focus on the development of anti-cancer therapy and the regulation of pre-mRNA alternative splicing.

Sustained and significant research contributions to the epigenetic regulatory roles of chromatin remodeling, histone modifications, DNA methylation and key factors in the early embryonic development, the differentiation of stem cells, somatic cell reprogramming, and the initiation, progress and metastasis of cancer. The expertise includes conventional and (ultra)-low-input ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, DNase I-seq, RNA-seq, etc., and high-throughput data analysis.

Guangfu Jin, PhD, a professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University. The main research interests of Dr. Jin are focused on molecular and genetic epidemiology, especially identifying biomarkers for cancer risk prediction and prevention, clarifying biological roles of cancer risk related genetic variants in carcinogenesis, understanding inherited and somatic genetic changes in cancer with an integrated approach, assessing utility and effectiveness of biomarkers in guiding cancer personalized prevention or therapy. To date, he has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, including those on Nature Genetics, Gastroenterology, Gut and Am J Hum Genet, which have been cited by more than 4000 papers.

Dr. Alexis M. Kalergis. He is a Professor at the Schools of Biological Sciences and Medicine of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He obtained the Julius Marmur Award for his MSc and PhD work on Microbiology and Immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He performed post-doctoral training at the Albert Einstein and The Rockefeller University, supported by the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation. He is the Director of the Millennium Institute on Immunology and Immunotherapy. His research focuses on the molecular interactions regulating the T cell-DC synapse and their contribution to pathogen immunity and self-tolerance during autoimmunity.

Dr. Kovesdi is an accomplished scientist as well as biotechnology entrepreneur and serves as CSO of DNAtrix and President of KILA Consultants. Prior to DNAtrix, Imre served as the CEO of Vectorlogics, a biotechnology company developing virus based cancer therapies. Previously, he served as CSO with GenVec where he directing research and development. Before joining GenVec, he led projects in the development of gene expression systems at the New York-based American Cyanamid Company. Imre was a postdoctoral fellow at The Rockefeller University, holds a PhD in molecular biology from SFU and a degree in electrical engineering from UBC. He is the holder of over 100 US and foreign patents and has authored over 130 scientific articles in the areas of virology, gene delivery and molecular biology.

Professor Shinn-Zong (John) Lin, M.D., Ph.D., is a Professor of Neurosurgery, Superintendent of China Medical University Beigang Hospital and Tainan Municipal An-Nan Hospital-China Medical University, and Vice Superintendent of the Center for Neuropsychiatry at China Medical University Hospital in Taiwan. Now, he is also the president of Taiwan Neurosurgical Society and Coeditor-in-chief of Cell Transplantation - The Regenerative Medicine Journal.

Dr. Ljubimov is Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Neurosurgery, Director of Eye Program of Regenerative Medicine Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and UCLA Professor of Medicine. He authored over 120 papers and is on editorial boards of 13 journals. He is an Overseas Fellow of Royal Society of Medicine (London), and Gold Fellow of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. He is working on diabetic eye disease and cancer nanotechnology. He pioneered gene therapy for diabetic corneal stem cells, and discovered angiogenic role of protein kinase CK2. He contributed to the development of Polycefins, targeted nanodelivery systems for cancer treatment.

Fredric Manfredsson received his undergraduate training in microbiology and virology at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ and his PhD in Biomedical Sciences-Neuroscience from the University of Florida. He then received postdoctoral training in the laboratories of Dr. Ronald Mandel and Dr. Alfred S. Lewin during which he focused on viral vector design and gene therapy for neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Manfredsson joined the neuroscience faculty at the University of Florida as a research Assistant Professor in 2010. In the end of 2010 he was hired as an Assistant Professor at the new Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.

Dr. Martino received his Medical Degree in 1987 from the Univ. of Pavia where he completed his residency in Neurology in 1991. In 1990, He held the position of Research Associate at the Dept. of Neurology of the Univ. of Chicago. From 1992 to 2008, he worked first as Senior Scientist and then as Director of the Neuroimmunology Unit of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, where, from 2008, he acts as Director of the Dept. of Neuroscience. He is full professor of experimental biology at the Univ. Vita-Salute San Raffaele and honorary professor at Queen Mary Univ. of London.

Dr. Shigeo Masuda received his MD from the University of Tokyo in 1996, and PhD in Hematology/Oncology from the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Japan. He was an Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor at Jichi Medical University, Japan, from 2007 to 2012, and joined RIKEN CDB in 2011. He studied at the Belmonte Lab in the Salk Institute from 2012 to 2014. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery in Osaka University, Japan. His interest is regenerative medicine using iPS-derived cells, including molecular targeted therapy for iPS-derived undifferenated cells to improve safety.

Dr. Mathis received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Currently, he is Professor and Department Head of Comparative Biomedical Sciences at Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine. Having published over 100 scientific manuscripts, he has worked in the field of translational cancer research to develop multiple methods of gene and cell therapy, particularly in using adenovirus-based delivery vehicles. In particular, his laboratory has modified capsid proteins on adenovirus vectors for cancer retargeting and molecular imaging, as well as developed adenovirus-based cancer vaccines and conditionally replicating vectors for cancer therapy.

Guillermo D. Mazzolini obtained MD degree at the University of Rosario, Argentina. In 2000 obtained a PhD in gene therapy of cancer at the University of Navarra, Spain. Currently, he is the Director of Gene Therapy laboratory at Instituto de Investigaciones en Medicina Traslacional (IIMT), Universidad Austral-CONICET . In addition, he holds a position as Principal Investigator of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET), Deputy Director of the IIMT Universidad Austral-CONICET, and Director of the PhD Programe. The major research interests of Prof. Mazzolini includes molecular and cellular therapies in liver diseases, with an special focus on liver cancer. In addition, he has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in the field.

Born in Rimini, 51 years old, he graduated in Bologna in 1994, a specialist in Internal Medicine; he has always dealt with autoimmune liver disease, both from a clinical and research point of view. Author of more than 100 publications with an average impact factor> 7.

Dr. Lalit Singh Pukhrambam obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology and Department Ophthalmology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit. His research interest involves cellular and molecular mechanisms of diabetes and its complications including diabetic retinopathy, oxidative stress, inflammasomes and innate immune responses, autophagy/mitophagy, mitochondrial dysfunction and retrograde nuclear signaling, epigenetics and gene and tissue engineering and therapies. He teaches Cell Biology and Histology for first year medical students and the renal system for graduate Ph.D. program.

Dr. Frédéric Relaix, Ph.D., is currently employed as Professor of medicine at Université Paris Est Créteil (UPEC), Créteil, France. Additionally, he is Director of the ESPRY research department as well as the IMRB research center, and Director of the team Biology of the neuromuscular system, at UPEC. His research interests mainly lie in the subject areas/fields of Skeletal Muscle, Muscle Damage, Muscle Function, Neuromuscular Disorders, Stem Cell Biology, Gene Expression, and Stem Cell Culture. Dr. Relaix, as an author/co-author, has published more than 90 articles in various journals, having considerable number of total citations, i.e. over 6,245.

Dr. Ulrich Wolfgang Siler obtained his Habilitation of Venia Legendi for Pediatric Immunology, Experimental Immunology and Gene Therapy in 2016 from the Medical Faculty of University of Zürich, Switzerland. Dr. Siler is currently employed as Scientific Research Laboratory Head, in the Division of Immunology, at University Children’s Hospital Zurich. His research interests mainly lie in the subject areas/fields of Gene Therapy, Hematopoietic Stem Cells, Retroviral Vectors, etc. Dr. Siler, as an author/co-author, has published more than 30 articles in various journals of international repute, having over 2,315 total citations.

Michele Simonato is Professor of Pharmacology at the Medical Schools of the University of Ferrara and of the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy. He is Chair of a joint task force of the International League against Epilepsy and of the American Epilepsy Society, aimed at optimizing the development of new anti-epilepsy therapies. He received his MD at the University of Ferrara, and carried out his training at the University of Florence, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Duke University Medical Center. His research focuses on the development of new therapeutic approaches (in particular, gene therapy) for epilepsy.

Sun Zhenqiang, graduated from Xiangya Medical College of Central South University. Doctor of Medicine, Postdoctor in Surgery. Doctor Sun has published about 30 papers in SCI journals such as Adv Sci, Mol Cancer, Oncogene, J Hematol Oncol, Cancer Lett, etc. Among them, there are 6 SCI articles with a score of more than 10 points and a maximum of 15.804 points (Adv Sci). Patents: 10 national patents are authorized, including 2 national invention patents.

Dr. Jie Sun received her Ph.D. in biophysics from Harbin Medical University, China. She has been engaged in the study of bioinformatics since 2004. Currently, she is a full associated professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Wenzhou Medical University, China. Her research interests include cancer bioinformatics, non-coding RNA bioinformatics and clinical bioinformatics. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed papers which have been cited over 1800 times with the H-index of 24 and i10-index of 36 as indicated in Google Scholar (update in 2020.03). Dr. Sun contributed significantly to the computational identification of novel biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment response based on multi-omics data. She also conceptualized, designed developed, and co-developed computational methods/tools to analyze and interpret human genes, diseases and gene-disease association from system biology perspective.

I have a wide variety of expertise ranging from cellular and molecular biology to translational research, aiming to bridge tumor microenvironment, metabolism and metastasis with an emphasis on several molecular determinants and develop novel promising diagnostic and therapeutic strategies by targeting them. I serve on multiple grant review panels, national and international committees and journal editorial boards, and authored over 100 articles and chapters in reputed journals and books till 2020. My research projects are supported by DOD, NIH and other fund resources, providing a balanced mix of basic and translational science.

Marcio J. Tiera received his MSc and PhD in Physical Chemistry at the University of São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil), working under supervision of Miguel G. Neumann. From 1995 to 1997 he was a postdoctoral researcher at Institute of Biosciences, Humanities and Exact Sciences-UNESP (1995-1996). In 2005 he was postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Montreal University in the Françoise Winnik`s research group. In 2010 he conducted postdoctoral research at the Hôpital du Sacré Coeur de Montreal at the Orthopedic Research Group, led by Prof. Julio Cesar Fernandes. M. Tiera holds an Associate Professor position at the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences at UNESP, the São Paulo State University. His current scientific interests are related to polymers and colloids, focusing the synthesis and characterization of nanoparticles for non-viral gene therapy, antimicrobial activity of amphiphilics and self-assembly of nanosized aggregates.

Professor Seppo Ylä-Herttuala, MD, PhD, is a pioneer and leader in cardiovascular gene therapy. He was the first in the world to apply catheter-mediated adenoviral gene transfer to human arteries in 1995. Since then he has developed a highly successful research team focusing on angiogenesis, new members of the VEGF family and their clinical applications. He is also the originator of the concept of “epigenetherapy”. He has conducted nine phase I-III clinical trials with vectors produced in his laboratory and has served as President of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (2010-2012).

Dr. Ying Yuan obtained MD and Ph.D. in Oncology from Zhejiang University School of Medicine and performed her postdoctoral work at University of Luebeck. Currently, she is working as a Professor at the Department of Oncology as well as Chief Oncologist of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine. Her main research interests include individualized treatment of malignant tumors and genetic studies of hereditary colorectal cancer. She has contributed to more than 80 scientific papers so far and was awarded the Southern California Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons Award.

Dr. Zhang is now a chief physician and director of general gynecology.in Women’s Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine. Dr. Zhang has been involved in translational and clinical research to develop novel treatments for endometriosis and adenomyosis. His basic research mainly focused on the mechanisms of endometriosis-associated pain, and was supported by the grants of the National Key R&D Program of China, etc. He is a regular contributor to peer reviewed scientific journals including Human Reproduction, Fertility and Sterility, Obstetrics & Gynecology, etc. He has published over 100 scientific articles, and authored a book of Adenomyosis.

Dr. Wen Zhang obtained the Bachelor’s degree and the Master’s degree in Computational Mathematics from Wuhan University in 2003 and 2006, respectively. Following these, he received the Doctoral degree in Computer Science from Wuhan University in 2009. He worked at Wuhan University from 2009 to 2018. Currently, he is working as a Professor in the College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural University, People’s Republic of China. His research interests include machine learning, data mining and bioinformatics. He has published more than 60 papers in well-reputed journals or conferences, such as Nucleic acids research, Bioinformatics, PLoS Computational Biology, IEEE/ACM transactions on computational biology and bioinformatics, Information Science, etc.

Fang Zheng, PhD Professor, Center for Gene Diagnosis, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Wuhan University Zhongnan Hospital, Wuhan, China; Committeeman of Education Group of Chinese Society of Laboratory Medicine; Standing Committee of Laboratory Medicine Branch of Chinese society of Geriatrics; Vice Secretary-General for Chinese Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology - Lipid and Lipoprotein Branch; Committeeman of Prenatal Diagnosis Association in Hubei Province.

Dr. Meng Zhou received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Jilin University in 2016, China. He has been engaged in the study of bioinformatics since 2004. Currently, he is a full associated professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Wenzhou Medical University, China. His research interests include computational system biology, bioinformatics and application for human complex disease. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers which have been cited over 2000 times with the H-index of 25 and i10-index of 36 as indicated in Google Scholar (update in 2020/5). There were 10 papers and 1 paper on the list of the ESI ‘Highly Cited Papers’ and ‘Hot Paper’, respectively. He is also the Associated Editor of the journal <Frontiers in Oncology> and <Frontiers in Genetics> and the editor of the journal <Current Bioinformatics>. Dr. Zhou contributed significantly to the computational identification of novel biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment response based on multi-omics data. He also conceptualized, designed developed, and co-developed computational methods/tools to analyze and interpret human genes, diseases and gene-disease associations from system biology perspective.

Dr. Peng Zhou is an Associate Professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC). He received his PhD degree from Zhejiang University, P.R. China in 2011. From 2012 to 2013, he worked as a Post-doctor in U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), USA. He has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers in SCI-indexed journals.

Dr. Manish Mishra is pursuing his research at Kresge Eye Institute, Wayne State University, Michigan. His research focus is to understand the mechanism underlying the development of diabetic retinopathy and the complications associated with it. His research group identified that reduced expression of mitochondrial DNA gene is one of the causal factors of mitochondrial dysfunction, reduced biogenesis and capillary cell death, one of target cells in the histopathology of retinopathy. His current research objective is to investigate the mechanism/s behind increased oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction and subsequent cell loss in the development of diabetic retinopathy.

Prof. Rosalba Parenti is Associate Professor of Physiology at University of Catania, Italy. She is Head of Laboratory of Molecular & Cellular Physiology of BIOMETEC, and Delegate of the Rector of the University of Catania as “Titolare dello Stabilimento Utilizzatore Unico and Preclinical Area of the Center for Advanced Preclinical in vivo Research (CAPiR). She received her Ph.D in “Neurosciences” from University of L’Aquila, Italy in 1995. The scientific career of Prof. Parenti is focused on understanding the cellular pathways and molecular modifications that can shift omeostatic cellular balance to pathological conditions.

Francesco Porta obtained MD degree, residency in Pediatrics, and PhD in experimental Pediatrics at the University of Torino.  His clinical and research activity is mostly focused in the field of inborn errors of metabolism, including disorders of neurotransmission. Currently, he is licensed associate professor of Pediatrics and metabolic pediatrician at the Department of Pediatrics of the University of Torino. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in the field of Pediatrics.

Dr. Prof. Tao Sun is currently an associate professor at School of Pharmacy, Fudan University (China). His research mainly includes functional drug formulation, targeting drug delivery and theranostics prodrug design. He published more than 50 papers on ACS Nano, Nano Lett., Biomaterials, et. al, with a H-index 21.

Dr Rong Xu received his PhD in the field of Biochemistry from La Trobe University in 2017 and work as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Genetics at La Trobe University. His research interest has mainly focused on extracellular vesicle isolation and characterisation, profile protein and RNA of extracellular vesicle, and function characterization, and diagnostic and therapeutic application of cancer-derived extracellular vesicles. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles and 4 book chapters in the field of extracellular vesicle, proteomics, and cancer which has been cited over 1,800 times with the H-index of 15 and i10-index of 16. There were 3 papers on the list of the WOS as “highly cited papers”. He serves as an associated Editorial Member for Current Gene Therapy journal.

Dr Jiajia Zhou received his MD degree in the field of Clinical Medicine (Surgery) from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. He is currently working in the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. His research interest mainly focused on the molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis in liver cancer and hepatology cancer metabolism and Role of non-coding RNA in cancer. His current research objective is to investigate the mechanisms underlying the long non-coding RNA dysregulation and glucose metabolism dysfunction in the development of hepatoma.

Dr. Liu is an Assistant Professor of the Department of neurosurgery, Xiangya Hospital, centered on brain tumor therapeutics, brain organoid research, and drug screening. His doctoral training was in Neurosurgery at Central South University, and stem cell research in Houston Methodist Research Institute, Cornell University. A major goal of his research is basic-translation-clinical research by utilizing in vitro and in vivo cultured and primary models of the brain to study the molecular pharmacology and mechanisms of glioma and neuropsychiatric diseases pathogenesis. He published more than 11 original papers on identifying molecular markers in brain diseases and drug screening using brain organoid models.

Dr. Jianyong Xu obtained his Ph.D. degree (in 2016) in the field of Medicine from The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Dr. Xu is currently working as Assistant Professor, in the School of Medicine, at Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China. His research interests mainly lie in the subject areas/fields of stem cell biology, genome editing, gene therapy and their therapeutic applications. Dr. Xu, as an author/co-author, has published more than 20 manuscripts in various journals of international repute, and his documents have received over 2,290 citations.

Dr. Mingxin Zhang is presently serving as a Associate professor in Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Medical University, Xi’an, China. He completed M.D. in 2008 and then Ph.D. in 2011 from Xi’an Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Xi’an, China. His research interest includes Molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis in gastroenterology and hepatology cancer Diagnosis and screening of colorectal cancer and Role of non-coding RNA in cancer. He has contributed his valuable publications in different scientific journals.

Dr. Hao Zhou is a cardiologist in Chinese PLA General Hospital, focusing on the pathology and treatment of acute/chronic cardiorenal damage such as myocardial infarction, cardiorenal syndrome and diabetic cardiomyopathy. After vigorous training in University of Wyoming, Dr. Zhou have acquired the basic experimental techniques involved in molecular/cellular biology and physiological testing. His major area of research is focused on cardiac pathophysiology in acute reperfusion injury, diabetes, obesity and aging. His laboratory in PLA general hospital is well versed with molecular biology techniques including oxidative stress, mitochondrial function, autophagy and apoptosis. Much of his current focuses are on the pathophysiological consequence of cardiac ischemia-reperfusion injury on metabolic and mitochondrial functions. The goal of his research is to better understand the pathogenesis of cardiac diseases as well as to develop strategies (such as melatonin and SGLT2i) to lessen myopathic disorders under these conditions. He has gained broad training and background in clinical cardiology and experimental cardiac physiology. He has extensive experience in cardiac function and structure assessment with an emphasis on mitophagy function and mitochondrial stress- related myocardial damage. As PI on several grants, he has successfully administered many research projects and collaborated with other researchers.