Combatting disease with antibody drug conjugates

About the speakers

Dr Philipp Spycher, CSO and co-founder at Araris Biotech

As the inventor of the Araris ADC Technology, Philipp has a profound background in Bioconjugation and ADCs. He was the founding CEO since the inception of Araris in 2019 securing $40M in financing from Swiss, UK, US and Korean investors and $2.5M non-dilutive financing from the Swiss Accelerator Grant (five percent funding rate). He positioned Araris to shift the paradigm in how to think about developing targeted cancer therapies and since October 2023, he transitioned to become its CSO.

During his post-doctoral work at PSI, he introduced the novel approach using transglutaminases for antibody conjugation that led to the discovery of the Araris ADC Technology. He obtained his Master’s Degree and PhD from ETH Zurich at the interface of Material Science and Protein Engineering.

Dr Rebecca Boohaker, Director of Oncology at Southern Research

Boohaker is the study director for the oncology department. She designs, oversees, executes and interprets all cancer-related in vivo studies to evaluate potential cancer treatments, including cancer-fighting viruses and other agents that might help combat the disease. Trained primarily as a molecular biologist, Boohaker’s graduate work at the University of Central Florida resulted in a targeted peptide therapy to combat triple negative breast cancer. Since joining Southern Research, her recent work has focused on chemo-resistant colorectal cancers, as well as pancreatic cancers, which are aggressive and highly resistant to treatment.

Boohaker received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a doctorate in biomedical sciences from the University of Central Florida. Her postdoctoral work at Southern Research focused on cancer biology and DNA damage repair.