CPHI Podcast Series: Designing Drug Conjugates

Digital Editor Lucy Chard goes through the bioconjugate journey in this latest podcast from the CPHI Podcast Series, from development to manufacturing, with two experts in the field from Abzena, Louise Duffy and Campbell Bunce. 

Louise has a very extensive background in the global Bio/pharmaceutical industry with more than 30 years of experience in R&D and Commercial Supply having held senior roles in GlaxoSmithKline as VP & Global Supply Chain Head, Biopharmaceuticals, where she also served as VP and Corporate Officer of Human Genome Sciences, Inc,. and Janssen R&D (J&J) as VP & Global Head, Strategic Sciences. She has wide-ranging experience in developing, licensing, and supplying Biopharmaceuticals, Vaccines, and Cell and Gene Therapy products for global markets.  Louise has broad CMC and Regulatory experience including the development of strategic CMC plans to support regulatory filings such as INDs, IMPDs, BLA, MAAs.

Louise holds a PhD and a MSc in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College, London, UK and a BSc (Comb Hons) in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Campbell Bunce is Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and Cambridge Site Head at Abzena. He leads a talented team of scientists across a diverse range of expertise and capabilities to support drug discovery, design, and developability; and cell line development. He ensures that Abzena’s strong innovation focus and depth of scientific expertise is maintained through technological developments and works in partnership with clients to design and deliver solutions that support their program needs.

Campbell has over 25 years of experience working in the biotech and diagnostics sectors. Before joining Abzena in 2015, he held multiple positions of increasing responsibility in Biotech including Head of Cellular Immunology at Cantab Pharmaceuticals, Director of Programs at Piramed Pharma, and R&D Director at Immune Targeting systems.

Throughout his career he has applied innovative solutions for the design, manufacture and clinical evaluation of novel products including vaccines, biologics, and small molecules in multiple therapeutic areas. These include inflammation, cancer, infectious disease, and addiction.

Campbell has a PhD in Immunology from the University of Manchester, an Executive MBA from Judge Business School, Cambridge University and has published a number of papers on cell-mediated immunity, immunotherapy and vaccines.

In this podcast Louise and Campbell use their cumulative knowledge to give an overview of the drug development and manufacturing processes, demonstrating all of the aspects that go into such an undertaking as making a new drug for a patient population. They highlight some of the key areas that teams have to work on, the detailed analysis that has to take place at each stage, as well as within the wider context with regulations to consider, and finally they highlight some of the key areas for innovation and for expanding knowledge in the field.