Nanothera Summit 2025

Dr. María J. Vicent is a leading Spanish chemist and nanomedicine researcher, known for her work on polymer-based drug delivery systems for cancer and inflammatory diseases. She heads the Polymer Therapeutics Lab at the Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe (CIPF) in Valencia, where her pioneering research enhances drug efficacy and minimizes side effects. Widely published and respected, Dr. Vicent has made significant contributions to translating polymer therapeutics from research to clinical applications, and she actively supports interdisciplinary collaboration and women in science.

Dr. Pierre-Alexandre Driguez is specialized both in Carbohydrate and Lipid Chemistry. He holds a strategic position at Sanofi as Head of mRNA platform in Paris. His work is focused on the development of innovative Non-Viral vectors for Cell and Gene Therapy projects. Known for bridging fundamental science with clinical application, Dr. Driguez’s interdisciplinary work continues to drive forward the field of genetic medicine and therapeutic innovation.

Dr. Heinrich Haas, has his professional focus on development of pharmaceutical products in the field of nanotechnology and drug & RNA delivery. In his Ph.D. in the group of Prof. Dr. Helmuth Möhwald at Johannes-Gutenberg Universität Mainz and academic career in Italy and Brazil he researched lipid membranes and organized bio-molecular systems. Having moved to pharmaceutical industry he developed nanoparticle products with application in cancer, inflammatory diseases autoimmune diseases and other indications. At BioNTech, he is the scientific lead of the formulation and analytics department, which develops RNA therapeutics based on a broad scope of delivery technologies.

Dr. Julen Oyarzabal is a prominent figure in drug discovery and chemical biology, particularly in oncology and precision medicine (>100 peer-reviewed scientific articles & >30 Patents). He serves as CSO for Syngoi, a biotechnology company specializing in synthetic genomics and gene synthesis, where he contributes to the development of advanced platforms for gene and cell therapies. Dr. Oyarzabal is also Partner and CSO at Columbus Venture Partners, where he helps identify and support cutting-edge biotech startups focused on innovative therapeutic solutions. His work across these roles emphasizes small-molecule drug development, targeted cancer therapies, and gene synthesis technologies, driving forward personalized medicine and novel treatment options.

Anand Subramony is Vice President of the DDCS (Delivery, Device, and Connected Solutions) group at Lilly and he provides leadership to early development of combination products and novel drug delivery technologies. With end to end early development focus Anand provides leadership to various teams working in the areas of drug delivery and targeted delivery including nanomedicine for nucleic acid modalities. Prior to Lilly, Anand was Vice President within the Biologics Engineering and Targeted Delivery group, at AstraZeneca where he led various cross-functional teams in the areas of nanomedicine, drug conjugates, and drug delivery of new modalities including implantable cell therapy devices. Prior to that Anand headed the Drug Delivery & Device Development at Medimmune and built an internal team that focused on combination product development, connected devices, digital biomarkers/sensors, as well as advanced novel delivery technologies including oral peptide delivery and other novel controlled release technologies.
In other roles, Anand was Principal Fellow and Head of Novel Delivery Technologies at Novartis (NIBR, Cambridge, MA), head of the Materials Science group at Alza /J&J (Mountain View, CA), and Director of Materials Science & Drug delivery at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories (Bridgewater, NJ). With his broad experience in pharma biotech, Anand brings innovation and scientific rigor coupled with execution excellence and sense of urgency to create patient centric products. He has established and managed high-performing teams in all his roles. Dr. Subramony holds an M.S. degree in Materials Science Engineering (IIT, Bombay) and a Ph.D. degree from Purdue University. With several refereed publications and patents, he is a sought-after Key Opinion Leader in the areas of drug delivery and product development.

Dr. Anthony T. Cheung is the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of enGene, a Nasdaq-listed clinical-stage biotechnology company mainstreaming genetic medicines through the delivery of therapeutics to mucosal tissues, with the goal of creating new ways to address diseases with high clinical needs. He is a co-inventor of enGene’s proprietary non-viral polymeric gene delivery platform for mucosal tissues. During his tenure as the Chief Executive Officer from 2012 to 2018, he raised significant financing to grow the company through venture-backed equity financing and government funding. He also successfully completed two partnership transactions with large pharma companies. Under his leadership, enGene was awarded by BIOTECanada as the Biotech Company of the Year. Dr. Cheung received his doctorate degree in Physiology from the Tulane University School of Medicine (New Orleans, USA). He has co-authored numerous book chapters, review articles and peer-reviewed journals and he is named inventor on numerous patents in the areas of gene delivery and polymer chemistry.

Cristianne is a life science entrepreneur, as apparent from 17+ years strategic and hands-on experience in various biotech companies. With a relentless and creative mindset, Cristianne spearheads startup’s entrepreneurial journeys with primary focus on viable business cases. Hereto, she seamlessly manages the diverse elements from pure R&D to corporate funding, investor relationship, talent acquisition and team growth, intellectual property strategy, business development, strategic assessments and boardroom alignment. She transforms scientific discoveries into commercially successful applications and drives a highly efficient development of innovative drug products to patient evaluation across diverse disease areas. Her core expertise is in nanomedicines in (immune-) oncology; and meanwhile also experience with other advanced products in other therapeutic sectors.
As CEO of Liberates, she tackles complex challenges at life science startups with demonstrated ability to articulate long term strategy and focus, propose organizational change, and deliver operational excellence. Cristianne is founder of Cristal Therapeutics and serves as Chief Scientific Officer of the company. She is inventor of 8 patents, (co-) author of ~ 55 scientific publications, and is invited speaker at various biopharmaceutical conferences.

Full Professor, Department of Pharmacy, Pharmacology and Health Technologies, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universidade de Lisboa Head of BioNanoSciences – Drug Delivery; Immunoengineering group, Research Institute for Medicines, iMed.ULisboa, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universidade de Lisboa Helena Florindo graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2003 (University of Lisbon) and obtained her Ph.D. degree in Pharmaceutical Technology in 2008 (University of Lisbon), in collaboration with the University of London. Currently, she is a Full Professor in the Department of Pharmacy, Pharmacology, and Health Technologies at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon. Since 2015, she has been the head of the BioNanoSciences – Drug Delivery & Immunoengineering Research Group, at the Research Institute for Medicines (iMed.ULisboa), University of Lisbon. Helena is also a member of the Portuguese Medicines Agency Evaluation Board (INFARMED) and an expert to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), thus supporting the evaluation of marketing authorization procedures for new drugs and biologics. This knowledge in regulatory sciences also guides the research within her research group, which has been focused on the rational development of functionalized nanomaterials as new therapies or vaccines for infectious diseases and cancer. It includes the characterization of the anti-tumor effects induced by the combination of nano-vaccines with nano-therapeutics designed to modulate the functions of key cells within tumor microenvironment, such as T cells, myeloid-derived cells, and tumor cells.

Jeanne Leblond Chain is a drug delivery expert focused on stimuli-responsive lipid nanoparticles. Equipped with an engineering degree in organic chemistry, she developed synthetic vectors for gene therapy in her Ph.D. (University of Paris V) and molecular tweezers for controlled drug delivery during her post-doc (Prof. Leroux, University of Montreal). She joined the Faculty of Pharmacy (University of Montreal) in 2011 and directed the Gene Delivery Laboratory for 8 years. In 2019, she was recruited as a senior researcher at INSERM in the ARNA laboratory.

As a group leader of “Targeted Aptamers, Medicines , and Sensing”, she is exploring supramolecular assemblies of lipids and nucleic acids for environment-responsive and controlled drug delivery systems.

She has developed original ionizable lipids capable of switching conformation and improving endosomal escape of RNA, with proof-of-concept studies in vitro and in vivo in cancer, liver , and lung diseases. She is also developing DNA nanotechnology as drug delivery vectors, focusing on controlled release and targeting ligands using aptamer technology.

Dr. Julen Oyarzabal is a prominent figure in drug discovery and chemical biology, particularly in oncology and precision medicine (>100 peer-reviewed scientific articles & >30 Patents). He serves as CSO for Syngoi, a biotechnology company specializing in synthetic genomics and gene synthesis, where he contributes to the development of advanced platforms for gene and cell therapies. Dr. Oyarzabal is also Partner and CSO at Columbus Venture Partners, where he helps identify and support cutting-edge biotech startups focused on innovative therapeutic solutions. His work across these roles emphasizes small-molecule drug development, targeted cancer therapies, and gene synthesis technologies, driving forward personalized medicine and novel treatment options.

Luis currently serves as VP of the Delivery Platform at Beam Therapeutics. He leads a team responsible for early research and development of viral and non-viral delivery systems to enable base editing. Prior to Beam, he spent six years at Moderna Therapeutics, leading discovery efforts around novel delivery systems and routes of administration for vaccines and therapeutics. His team was instrumental in selecting, optimizing, and characterizing the lead LNP for Moderna’s COVID vaccine. Before Moderna, he worked at Novartis Vaccines, developing delivery systems for RNA vaccines and adjuvants, and leading work on Novartis’s SAM/LNP formulation. Luis received his Master’s and PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Northeastern University and his BS in Human Physiology from Boston University. He has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed papers and is a co-inventor on 15 patents.

Dra. María J. Vicent is a leading Spanish chemist and nanomedicine researcher, known for her work on polymer-based drug delivery systems for cancer and inflammatory diseases. She heads the Polymer Therapeutics Lab at the Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe (CIPF) in Valencia, where her pioneering research enhances drug efficacy and minimizes side effects. Widely published and respected, Dr. Vicent has made significant contributions to translating polymer therapeutics from research to clinical applications, and she actively supports interdisciplinary collaboration and women in science.

Marisol Quintero is the CEO of Highlight Therapeutics, a company dedicated to the development of therapies for the treatment of skin tumors. Currently in phase 2b with its most advanced product, BO-112, a nanoparticle capable of activating the immune system and causing the death of tumor cells.

Matthias Barz obtained his PhD in polymer chemistry in 2010 from the JGU (Mainz, Germany), conducted postdoctoral research stays at CIPF (Valencia, Spain) and HMS (Boston, USA), started his own group 2013 in Mainz and is since 2020 full professor and head of the BioTherapeutics division at the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR) (Leiden, Netherlands). His research focusses on the development of nanomedicines based on polypept(o)ides (copolymers combining polypeptoids and polypeptides). These materials provide access to stealth nanoparticles completely based endogenous amino acids, which are stable in circulation but degrade and metabolize over time. His lab also initiated the development of pSar-lipids as alternative to PEGalated lipids in liposomes and LNPs.

Trained in Chemistry, at the University of Leipzig. His scientific expertise includes chemistry, pharmaceutical sciences and immunology. He joined CureVac in July 2007 when he was responsible for the development and preclinical testing of new formulations for mRNA vaccines and therapeutics. He is inventor of several patents and he co-authored several publications on mRNA technology. Currently he is heading the technology area within CureVac being responsible for mRNA optimization, protein design and delivery.

Dr. Pierre-Alexandre Driguez is specialized both in Carbohydrate and Lipid Chemistry. He holds a strategic position at Sanofi as Head of mRNA platform in Paris. His work is focused on the development of innovative Non-Viral vectors for Cell and Gene Therapy projects. Known for bridging fundamental science with clinical application, Dr. Driguez’s interdisciplinary work continues to drive forward the field of genetic medicine and therapeutic innovation.

Sven Even Borgos holds an undergraduate in physics and mathematics, a PhD in molecular genetics – and has been working for more than a decade in the field of nanomedicines characterization. His current primary field of research is on formulation and characterization of nucleic acid nanomedicines, with an emphasis on mRNA and lipid nanoparticles, and he was responsible for the recent four-year SINTEF strategic initative in mRNA medicines. Other nucleic acid modalities, like antisense, siRNA and DNA are also in the scope of research, and he is SINTEFs project leader in numerous European research project on these topics.

Takeshi MORI received B. Sc. and then Ph. D. from Kyushu University in 2001. He became Assistant prof. at Tokushima University and then moved to Department of Chemistry and Biology Kyushu University. He spent his sabbatical at Duke University with Prof. A. Chilkoti for a year (2008-2009). He promoted to Assoc. Prof. in 2013. He was awarded by Japanese Analytical Chemical Society, Young Investigator Award 1999 and Society for Polymer Science Japan, Young Investigator Award 2010.

Independent consultant with focus on early-stage drug development – especially CMC. Scientific expertise in drug delivery systems, especially classical liposomes, nanoparticles
and non-viral nucleic acid delivery systems.

Recently, guiding the synthesis and formulation development activities of oligoglycerol lipids as a toolbox for mRNA delivery at Thermosome GmbH, Martinsried, Germany.