Presidential Chair - Florence Ely Nelson Arizona State University USA

A professor at Arizona State University, Arntzen is considered the godfather of a growing field of research sometimes called "pharming": engineering plants to produce specialized vaccines and other drugs. ZMapp, an injectable synthetic serum he helped devise using genetically engineered antibodies grown in tobacco plants, is currently the most promising drug treatment for people infected with Ebola. ZMapp still wasn’t approved for human use when it was given to two American health care workers who had been infected in Liberia last year, and Arntzen didn’t even find out about the real-life trial until after the fact. But by the time he got the news, the patients were showing rapid improvement, "which was very exciting," he says. Both recovered. Last fall, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services pledged up to $42 million in funding to speed the development of more serum. By February, there was enough supplies to begin clinical trials in Liberia and the U.S. Although the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has slowed, the threat of recurrence is real—and the risk of similar epidemics may be increasing. Pharming, which is now getting support from Big Pharma, could be the key to responding to future threats, providing a large supply of drugs or vaccines at epidemic speed.

Stephen Johnston is currently the co-director for the Center for Innovations in Medicine (CIM), a Professor in the School of Life Sciences, and Director of the Biological Design Graduate Program at The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. The CIM's and Dr. Johnston's current work focuses on innovative solutions to fundamental problems in biomedicine. The CIM is unique in that it has brought together a group of interdisciplinary scientists who first identify a problem, analyze the physical economy basis of the related issues and then come up with an inventive solution. Current major projects are 1) Cancer Eradication: The focus is on developing a universal, preventative cancer vaccine, 2) Health Futures: The aim is to produce a diagnostic system that allows continuous monitoring of the health status of healthy people - helping in the revolution to pre-symptomatic medicine. Dr. Johnston has experience in basic science, notably first cloning the Gal4 gene, showing that proteins have separable functional domains, and discovering the AAA proteins and their role in transcription. His focus now is in translational sciences and technology development. He was co-inventor/innovator of pathogen derived resistance, organelle transformation, the gene gun, genetic immunization, TEV protease system, expression library immunization, linear expression elements, synbodies and immunosignaturing. He is author of over 150 journal articles, has over 20 patents, and has garnered approximately $85M in grant support including large programs from DARPA, NIAID and NHLBI.

Drug targeting - vaccine technology - cancer treatment - presymptomatic diagnosis of cancers through identifying the biosignatures of disease

Pr. Frédéric Deschamps is a medical doctor since 1990 and he has completed his PhD of toxicology in 1993 at the University of Lille, France. He is the director of the Department of Occupational Health of the Medicine Faculty of Reims, France. He has published more than 40 papers in medical journals about occupational health and diseases.

Flu vaccines

Dr. Fouts joined Profectus in 2005 as one of the founders and the principle scientist. His responsibilities have been as a member of senior management to direct the team of scientists and technicians in the discovery and preclinical development of HIV vaccines, small molecule and antibody based antiviral therapies and microbicides that are within the Profectus research portfolio. He continues with that role as Senior Director of Virology. Dr. Fouts has 3 issued patents and numerous patent applications that form the vaccine and therapeutic technologies that are the intellectual property used to start Profectus BioSciences. Prior to joining Profectus, Dr. Fouts held a faculty position at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Dr. Fouts has more than 32 scientific publications that have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. Dr. Fouts received his Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (Director, Dr. David Ho) at Rockerfeller University in NYC.

HIV VACCINES

Dr. Zanetti is the Director of tumor immunology for the UCSD Center for Immunology, Infection and Inflammation. He directs the immunology course in the Biomedical Sciences graduate program.

principles of immunity for protection or discuss the state of the art of cancer vaccines.

Ravi Pottathil is President of Accudx Inc., a strategic technology and consulting company. Dr. Pottathil is an entrepreneur with a 40-year history spanning academia, industry, invention, and company creation. In 1996, Dr. Pottathil created Accudx as a diagnostic assay manufacturer. This company has progressed into consulting, technology and product development, and intellectual property services in biotech, medtech, and ecotech. His experience in academia and industry has covered various aspects of biochemistry, molecular biology, mammalian genetics, medical virology, tumor biology, and diagnostics, in both academic and industrial settings. As Chief Process Scientist at PetroAlgae, he was responsible for the development and scale up processes for growth, harvesting and processing of micro-algae. As a founding member and Director at Specialty Laboratories International, he successfully set up a large number of esoteric Clinical Reference Laboratories in Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia, and India. This involved extensive project planning, technical training and technology transfer. As a Vice President of Life Sciences at XLTech Group, he was co-founder of a number of publically listed companies including Tyratech [www.tyratech.com], Petro Algae, [www.parabel.com] and Initio Fuels [www.initiofuels.com]. As an academician, he has extensive teaching experience that includes original research and teaching at The Jackson Laboratories, The Duke University, University Of Maryland, The City of Hope Medical Center, The Rutgers University, Ambala College of Engineering, India, A&F University, Yangling, China and Florida International University. He has a number of issued patents. Current active projects of Dr. Pottathil include “target specific nano-ablation” of cancer highly sensitive nanotechnology based Point of Care Devises for the early detection of infectious diseases such as dengue, malaria, HIV and TB. He is also leading research and development activities related to non-toxic natural essential oil based insect control and chelated micronutrient based enhanced biomass and food production. Dr. Pottathil is a graduate of Tata Cancer Institute in Mumbai, India. He completed his post-doctoral fellowships at The Jackson Lab, Bar Harbor, ME and Duke University, NC. He worked as a Senior Manager at Hoffman La-Roche and was instrumental in their diagnostics program. He is currently a visiting professor at Florida International Univ. Miami.

nano delivery systems, aptamers and nano formulations.

Marek Malecki MD PhD is President of the Phoenix Foundation, San Francisco, CA, USA, Principal Investigator at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA, and Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin. He earned the MD degree at the Medical Academy, Poznan followed by Residency/Fellowships in Molecular Medicine in Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Cancer Center, Vienna, and Cancer Center, Warsaw. He earned the PhD degree at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw followed by the postdoctoral fellowships in molecular biology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Salzburg, ETH, Zurich, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Cancer Center, Amsterdam, Biozentrum, Basel. Over the last 20 years, he held faculty positions in Oncology and Molecular Medicine at the leading teaching hospitals and medical universities in the USA including the UW, UCSD, and SDSU. There, he acquired solid experience in streamlining advances in genomics and proteomics into novel strategies of therapy, as well as in teaching medical students, residents, and fellows. During his career, he served as the president and CEO of the Phoenix Biomolecular and Foundation for Molecular Medicine. Since 1988 his research, as the Principal Investigator, was continuously funded by the grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. He is the first or senior author on the peer-reviewed publications in the high impact journals, which are indexed on the PubMed. He is the inventor of the gene therapies, therapeutic vaccines, and regeneration of tissues, which are published at the USPTO and WIPO. He was elected to serve as the Editor in Chief in peer-reviewed, open-access journals in Science, Technology, and Medicine, as well as Editorial Board Member and Reviewer at many others. Close OCM Member Michael Vajdy Co-founder Principal and Chief Scientific Officer Mucosal Immunologist and Vaccinologist EpitoGenesis, Inc. USA Biography Research Interest OCM Member William B. Smith, MD, FACC President of New Orleans Center Professor of Medicine University of Tennessee Medical Center USA Biography Research Interest OCM Member Gregory J. Tobin VP/R&D, Chief Scientific Officer Biological Mimetics, Inc. USA Biography Research Interest OCM Member Carmen Alvarez-Dominguez Director of Genomics, Proteomics and Vaccines Institute Marqués de Valdecilla (IDIVAL) Spain Biography Research Interest

Gene therapies, therapeutic vaccines, and regeneration of tissues