Plenary Lecture Ⅰ

Prof. Christina Smolke

CEO & Co-Founder of Antheia, Inc.
Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University

TIME: April 13 (Thursday), 2023, 09:00-09:50

PLACE: Tamna Hall A (5F)

Publications: 92 (record from lab website)

h-index: 50 (record from Google Scholar)

Research

• Engineer ing RNA Devices for Cellular Information Processing, Sensing, & Control
• Scalable Measurement Platforms for Biological Engineering
• Engineering More Efficient Plant Natural Product Biosynthesis Platforms
• Synthetic Biology Platforms Advancing Natural Product Discovery & Production
• Mammalian Synthetic Biology

Background

Christina Smolke is CEO and co-founder of Antheia, Inc. and Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University. She earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Southern California in 1997 and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley in 2001. Dr. Smolke, a pioneer in the fields of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, joined Caltech’s faculty in 2003 as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and joined Stanford’s faculty in 2009, where she was Professor of Bioengineering. Dr. Smolke’s early work pioneered the design and application of a broad class of RNA molecules, RNA switches, that detect chemical signals and regulate targeted protein activities, providing programmable platforms for building biological sensors and control systems. At Stanford, her team led the breakthrough research to engineer baker’s yeast to produce some of the most complex and valuable plant-based essential medicines known to humankind. At Antheia, her vision and leadership has enabled a synthetic biology platform that dramatically expands the diversity and complexity of molecules that can be reconstructed, enabling new possibilities for drug discovery as well as efficient, sustainable, transparent, on-demand drug manufacturing at scale. Dr. Smolke’s impact in advancing the frontiers of biotechnology has been recognized with numerous awards, including Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, Nature’s 10, AIMBE College of Fellows, NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, NSF Career Award, Novozymes Award for Excellence in Biochemical Engineering, WTN Award in Biotechnology, and TR35 Award.

Presentation

Engineering yeast to synthesize medicinal compounds via an integrated systems approach

Plants are a rich source of medicinal compounds. However, the discovery, synthesis, and supply chains for plant-based medicines remain ad hoc, biased, and tedious. While microbial biosynthesis presents compelling alternatives to traditional approaches based on extraction from natural plant hosts, many challenges exist in the reconstruction of plant specialized metabolic pathways in microbial hosts. We have developed approaches to address the challenges that arise in the reconstruction of complex plant biosynthetic pathways in microorganisms. We have recently applied these strategies to develop yeast production platforms for important classes of plant alkaloids, including the tropane alkaloids.

Tropane alkaloids from nightshade plants are neurotransmitter inhibitors used for treating neuromuscular disorders and are classified as essential medicines by the World Health Organization. We engineered baker’s yeast to produce natural and non-natural medicinal tropane alkaloids starting from simple sugars and amino acids. We combined functional genomics to identify missing pathway enzymes, protein engineering to enable functional acyltransferase expression via trafficking to the vacuole, and strain optimization to improve titers. We further demonstrated that strategies to address metabolite transport limitations can further increase tropane alkaloid production. Our integrated system positions >20 proteins adapted from yeast, bacteria, plants, and animals across six sub-cellular locations to recapitulate the spatial organization of tropane alkaloid biosynthesis in plants. Microbial biosynthesis platforms can facilitate discovery of novel plant natural product derivatives as novel therapeutics for neurological disease and, once scaled, enable robust and agile supply of these essential medicines.

Keywords

plant natural products, metabolic engineering, machine learning

Plenary Lecture II

Prof. Christopher A. Voigt

Professor of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology

TIME: April 13 (Thursday), 2023, 09:50-10:40

PLACE: Tamna Hall A (5F)

Publications: 130 (record from lab website)

h-index: 68 (record from Google Scholar)

Research

• A programming language for cells
• Engineering cellular sensors
• Organelle refactoring and engineering
• Genome-scale design
• Engineering unusual organisms with unique capabilities

Background

I am the Daniel I.C. Wang Professor of Biotechnology in the Biological Engineering Department at MIT. I am the co-director of the Synthetic Biology Center. I am the co-founder of the companies Pivot Bio and Asimov IO. I do foundational work in the area of Synthetic Biology, applied to agriculture, chemicals, materials and therapeutics.

Presentation

Programmable Plant-Microbe Communication: Creating Self-fertilizing Crops

Cereal crops, such as corn, rice and wheat, require nitrogen fertilizer to obtain high crop yields. Nitrogen is chemically fixed through the Haber-Bosch process, which is a major consumer of global energy supplies (1-3%) and contributor to global warming. I will describe our work to develop microbial solutions to nitrogen fixation. We have developed a chemical language of communication between plants and microbials, allowing for the creation of artificial symbiotic relationships. The pathways for nitrogen fixation have been moved to corn-associated microbes and placed under the control of genetically-encoded sensors that ensure that nitrogen is fixed under the correct field conditions. Finally, I will describe the development of a microbial product that is now used on tens of billions of m2 of corn in the United States.

Keywords

Synthetic Biology, Agriculture

Plenary Lecture III

Prof. Molly M. Stevens

Imperial College London

TIME: April 13 (Thursday), 2023, 14:30-15:20

PLACE: Tamna Hall A (5F)

Publications: 472 (record from lab website)

h-index: 103 (record from Google Scholar)

Research

• Regenerative Medicine
• Biosensing
• Tissue Engineering
• Materials-based Characterisation
• Cell-Material Interface

Background

Prof Molly M Stevens FREng FRS is Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine and the Research Director for Biomedical Material Sciences in the Department of Materials, in the Department of Bioengineering and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London. She graduated with a First-Class Honours BPharm degree from Bath University in 1995 and a PhD from the University of Nottingham in 2001. After postdoctoral research in the Langer Lab at MIT, she joined Imperial College London in 2004 as a lecturer and was promoted to Professor in 2008 as one of the youngest Professors ever in the history of the institution. Molly’s multidisciplinary research balances the investigation of fundamental science with the development of technology to address some of the major healthcare challenges. Her work has been instrumental in elucidating the bio-material interfaces. She has created a broad portfolio of designer biomaterials for applications in disease diagnostics and regenerative medicine. Her substantial body of work influences research groups around the world (>400 publications, h-index 98, >39k citations, 2018 and 2021 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher in Cross-Field research).

Molly holds numerous leadership positions including Director of the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform "Smart Acellular Materials" Hub, Deputy Director of the EPSRC IRC in Early-Warning Sensing Systems for Infectious Diseases and Scientist Trustee of the National Gallery. She is Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), Foreign Member of the National Academy of Engineering (USA) and International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science.

Presentation

New Technologies for Advanced Therapeutics and Ultrasensitive Biosensing

In this talk I will discuss highlights of our nanomedicine portfolio including nanosensors for diagnosing and monitoring infectious and non-communicable diseases [1], and high molecular weight polymer carriers for enhanced delivery of saRNA therapeutics [2]. I will present advances in Raman spectroscopy for high-throughput label-free characterization of single nanoparticles (SPARTA™) that allow us to integrally analyse a broad range bio-nanomaterials such as polymer particles, liposomes and extracellular vesicles without any modification [3]. SPARTA™ has become an integral tool for the design of nanotherapeutics, with recent examples including DOPC-containing lipid nanoparticles for nucleic acid delivery and dendrimersome-based systems for controlled delivery of antibacterial drugs, and for profiling extracellular vesicles (EVs) for detection of breast cancer through a minimally invasive liquid biopsy. I will also discuss our cell interfacing nanoneedle platforms for multiplexed intracellular biosensing at sub-cellular resolution and modulation of biological processes [4]. I will explore how these versatile technologies can be applied to transformative biomedical innovations.

Plenary Lecture IV

Chief Editor Susan Jones

Chief Editor of Nature Microbiology

TIME: April 13 (Thursday), 2023, 15:20-16:10

PLACE: Tamna Hall A (5F)

Background

Susan studied Microbiology & Virology for her undergraduate degree at the University of Warwick. She received a PhD in Microbiology, studying quorum sensing in a plant pathogenic bacterium in George Salmond’s lab at the University of Warwick. After postdoctoral work at Imperial College, London investigating transcriptional mechanisms underlying stress responses in bacteria, she left the lab in 2003 to join the launch team of Nature Reviews Microbiology, becoming Chief Editor in 2008. She moved to join the PLOS Medicine team in 2009 where she was responsible for infectious disease, public health and molecular medicine and became Senior Research Editor in 2011. Susan joined Nature Biotechnology in 2012 where she spent eight years as Senior Editor, and was responsible for applied microbiology, microbiome technologies, microbial genomics and plant biotechnology among other areas. She joined Nature Microbiology as Chief Editor in March 2020. In 2022 she was appointed to a voluntary role as a Global assessor of small grants applications and event abstract submissions for the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene.

Presentation

Microbiology, Past, Present and Future: an Editor’s Perspective

Over the past 150 years microbiology has been established as a branch of science that can be divided into two research streams, basic and applied. During the same period of time, scientific publishing has also grown and changed to suit society, reader and author needs. This talk will highlight interesting and important advances over time in microbiology from an editor’s perspective. It will also provide a taste of how the research and publishing landscape is evolving and how to publish papers in highly selective journals, including Nature Microbiology and Nature Biotechnology.

Plenary Lecture V

Prof. Robert S. Langer

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

TIME: April 14 (Friday), 2023, 09:00-09:50

PLACE: Tamna Hall A (5F)

Publications: 1024 (record from lab website)

h-index: 306 (record from Google Scholar)

Research

• Drug delivery
• Tissue engineering
• Biomaterials
• Nanotechnology
• Chemistry

Background

Robert S. Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. Dr. Langer has written more than 1,570 articles. He also has over 1,400 issued and pending patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He is the most cited engineer in history (h-index 306 with over 380,000 citations according to Google Scholar).

He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 — 2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002.

Dr. Langer has received over 220 major awards. He is one of 3 living individuals to have received both the United States National Medal of Science (2006) and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011). He also received the 1996 Gairdner Foundation International Award, the 2002 Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers, the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize, the 2012 Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society, the 2013 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the 2014 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the 2014 Kyoto Prize. In 2015, Dr. Langer received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Dickson Prize for Science (2002), the Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the Harvey Prize (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright), the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research (2004), the Dan David Prize in Materials Science (2005), the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2005), the largest prize in the U.S. for medical research, induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2006), the Max Planck Research Award (2008), the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research (2008), the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize (2011), the Terumo International Prize (2012), the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science (2016), the Kabiller Prize in Nanoscience and Nanomedicine (2017), the Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Science (2019), the Medal of Science (Portugal’s highest honor, 2020), the Maurice-Marie Janot Award (2020), the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine (2021) and the Balzan Prize for Biomaterials for Nanomedicine and Tissue Engineering (2022). In 1998, he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world’s largest prize for invention for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” In 1989 Dr. Langer was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2012 he was elected to the National Academy of Inventors.

Forbes Magazine (1999) and Bio World (1990) have named Dr. Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world. Discover Magazine (2002) named him as one of the 20 most important people in this area. Forbes Magazine (2002) selected Dr. Langer as one of the 15 innovators worldwide who will reinvent our future. Time Magazine and CNN (2001) named Dr. Langer as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America (America’s Best). Parade Magazine (2004) selected Dr. Langer as one of 6 “Heroes whose research may save your life.” Dr. Langer has received 40 honorary doctorates. They include degrees from Harvard University, the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Yale University, Columbia University, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Gerstner Graduate School, the University of Maryland, the University of Western Ontario (Canada), ETH (Switzerland), the Technion (Israel), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), the Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Willamette University, the University of Liverpool (England), Bates College, the University of Nottingham (England), Albany Medical College, Pennsylvania State University, Northwestern University, Uppsala University (Sweden), Tel Aviv University (Israel), Boston University, Ben Gurion University (Israel), the University of Laval (Canada), Carnegie Mellon University, Drexel University, Hanyang University (South Korea), the University of New South Wales (Australia), Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Hong Kong), the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (Mexico), the University of Limerick (Ireland), the University of Illinois, Ohio State University, Olin College of Engineering, Alfred University, Macau University of Science and Technology, the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Maastricht University, and the University of California – San Francisco Medal. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering.

Presentation

Controlling the Release of Large Molecules from Biomaterials: How Overcoming Skepticism Led to New Medical Treatments and Ways to Tackle a Global Health Challenge

Advanced drug delivery systems are having an enormous impact on human health. We start by discussing our early research on developing the first controlled release systems for macromolecules and the isolation of angiogenesis inhibitors and how these led to numerous new therapies. This early research then led to new drug delivery technologies including nanoparticles and nanotechnology that are now being studied for use treating cancer, other illnesses and in vaccine delivery (including the Covid-19 vaccine). Approaches for synthesizing new biomaterials, such as biodegradable polyanhydrides, are then examined, and examples where such materials are used in brain cancer and other diseases are discussed. Finally, by combining mammalian cells, including stem cells, with synthetic polymers, new approaches for engineering tissues are being developed that may someday help in various diseases. Examples in the areas of cartilage, skin, blood vessels and heart tissue are discussed.

Plenary Lecture VI

Prof. Jin-Soo Kim

National University of Singapore

TIME: April 14 (Friday), 2023, 10:00-10:50

PLACE: Tamna Hall A (5F)

Publications: 155 (record from lab website)

h-index: 77 (record from Google Scholar)

Research

• Genome editing
• Organelle DNA editing
• CRISPR

Background

Kim Jin-Soo is a chemist, biologist, and entrepreneur. He was CEO and CSO, ToolGen, Inc., is a professor in the Department of Chemistry of Seoul National University and director of the Center for Genome Engineering. His research team has developed and improved several types of programmable nucleases, specifically zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), TAL effector nucleases (TALENs), and RNA-guided engineered nucleases (RGENs). In 2018, he was a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher in the cross-field category and in the biology and biochemistry category in 2019.

He first worked as a research associate at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology for three years.[1] In 1997, he became a principal investigator at the Samsung Biomedical Research Institute.[2] In 1999, he left that position to be the CEO and CSO of ToolGen; a company he founded. ToolGen is a biotech company based on CRISPR technology focusing on human therapies, and molecular breeding in plants and animals.[3] In 2005, the company was among the Top 10 Biotech Companies to Watch in Asia at the Pacific Rim Forum/China Council for the Promotion of Industrial Trade.[4][1] In that same year, he left his CEO position and started working at Seoul National University as an assistant professor, then associate and then full professor. From 2014, he became the founding director of the Center for Genome Engineering under the Institute for Basic Science (IBS).[5]

CRISPR-Cas9 is a widely used genetic tool but testing its accuracy genome wide is difficult. [6] In 2015, Kim's IBS Center, Seoul National University, and ToolGen jointly published a paper in Nature Methods outlining their technique named Digenome-seq which locates on-target and off-target sequences in CRISPR-Cas9.[7] Dignome-seq complements other genome wide off target analysis assays such as CIRCLE-seq and guide-seq, which are performed in vitro and in cellulo, respectively. He has continued to research increasing the accuracy of the process

Presentation

Genome Editing Beyond CRISPR

Genome editing in nuclear, mitochondrial, and chloroplast DNA is broadly useful for biomedical research, medicine, and biotechnology. CRISPR systems, widely used for nuclear DNA editing, are not suitable for organellar DNA editing, partially due to the difficulty of guide RNA delivery into organelles. Mitochondrial DNA editing paves the way for disease modeling of mitochondrial genetic disorders in cell lines and animals, and may offer treatment options for these diseases with unmet medical needs. Likewise, chloroplast DNA editing in plants provides unique opportunities in plant biotechnology and agriculture, such as improving photosynthesis and carbon fixation for carbon neutralization. I will present novel tools for A-to-G and C-to-T base editing of organellar DNA in human cells, animals, and plants

Keywords

Genome editing, gene therapy, mitochondria, chloroplast, carbon neutralization

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