Culture Biosciences Establishes Advisory Board of Biotech and Biopharma Executives to Guide the Corporate Strategy and Accelerate Growth

SAN FRANCISCO, June 01, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Culture Biosciences today announced the formation of its inaugural Advisory Board. The group of seasoned biotech and biopharma executives will provide Culture’s leadership with first-hand, senior insights and recommendations as the company advances its corporate strategy and identifies and pursues new growth opportunities.

“We see great potential to bring new technologies, such as cloud software and data-driven modeling, to upstream bioprocesses. With the emergence of cell and gene therapies, this kind of innovation is needed more than ever,” said Will Patrick, Chief Executive Officer of Culture Biosciences. “The joint experience of our Advisory Board will help us drive innovation for customers and seize new opportunities in partnering and business development at this pivotal juncture for our company.”

As recently announced, Culture Biosciences will be focusing its know-how, technology, services, and innovation in upstream bioprocess development on biologics.

“As a group, we have devoted our careers to advancing new therapies for patients,” said Joydeep Ganguly, Senior Vice President, Corporate Operations at Gilead Sciences, Inc. “We look forward to lending our combined expertise and experience to help Culture Biosciences implement the much-needed innovation in upstream bioprocess development to overcome a persistent bottleneck in developing scalable and optimized manufacturing processes for such therapies faster and more efficiently.”

The members of the new Advisory Board represent a wealth of strategic, clinical, regulatory, technical and financial leadership experience across the entire value chain of discovering, developing and manufacturing new therapies. Advisory Board members include:

Joydeep Ganguly, Senior Vice President, Corporate Operations at Gilead Sciences, Inc.

Joydeep has almost 25 years of experience in corporate engineering and operations, infrastructure and capital planning, risk management, procurement, technical operations, manufacturing and supply chain in the biopharmaceutical industry. Prior joining Gilead, Joydeep held various leading roles at Biogen and Bayer. He has published intensively about operations transformation, bioprocess optimization and supply chain evolution, and serves on the Boards of Directors of the Bay Area Council, Biocom California, and the Gilead Foundation. Joydeep holds a Master of Healthcare Administration from Cornell University, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, a Master of Business Administration from North Carolina State University, and Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from COEP Technological University.

Phil Vanek, PhD, Chief Technology Officer at Gamma Biosciences

Phil has almost 30 years of experience in the technical diligence of potential investments and in guiding operational, R&D and strategic initiatives in the biopharmaceutical industry. He is a Board Member of the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) in Toronto, Canada, and a past board director and executive committee member of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) Foundation in Washington, DC. Prior to joining Gamma Biosciences, Phil held various leading roles at GE Healthcare, Lonza, BD Sciences and Life Technologies. Between 2006 and 2014, he served as an instructor for Johns Hopkins’ Advanced Academic Programs for Masters of Biotechnology / Business Administration degrees. Phil received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Georgetown University Medical Center, followed by an NIH fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, and at the Hollings Cancer Center in Charleston, SC. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, NY.

Bob Todd, PhD, Digital Process Design Pioneer and former Senior Vice President, Technology and Innovation at KBI Pharma

Bob has almost 30 years of leadership experience in process engineering, as well as modeling and simulation in the biopharmaceutical industry. He is the Founder and CEO of Digital Process Design, a consulting firm that helps biopharmaceutical companies expand the use of modeling and simulation to improve the speed and efficiency of bioprocess development. He also initiated the Bioprocess Modeling and Simulation Industry Workshop, a now well-established industry forum to share and advance best practices. During his industry career, Bob held various leading roles in process development, and modeling and simulation at Amgen and KBI Biopharma where he last served as Senior Vice President, Technology and Innovation. Bob holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Caltech, and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

About Culture Biosciences’ propriety upstream bioprocess development platform
Customers design and monitor their experiments, collaborate on projects, and access and analyze data on a fully integrated platform that combines:

• 250mL bioreactors and 5L bioreactors, each with single-use vessels for mammalian cell lines or microbial fermentation. The 250mL reactors are mounted in mobile cart modules of four units.
• Dedicated and proprietary, cloud-based software to design and monitor experiments remotely, and to integrate and analyze data in one place. Remote, hybrid or multi-location teams can collaborate virtually on this platform.
• A suite of proprietary tools for process design and data analysis. These tools include a dynamic data analysis suite that enables rapid analysis and understanding of process and offline analytical data.

More than 70 client companies have trusted Culture Biosciences’ platform with their upstream bioprocess development in the 5 years since beginning operations in 2018. Customers include large, top-10 biopharma companies, leading CDMOs, and emerging and growing biotech clients.

About Culture Biosciences
Culture Biosciences is dedicated to innovation in upstream bioprocess development. Culture’s goal is to build new tools and services that improve the performance, time-to-develop, and cost-efficiency of therapeutic manufacturing processes. The company’s proprietary, fully integrated platform combines bioreactors, cloud-based software, and services to offer client companies around the world access to predictable, and scalable bioprocess development. Culture Biosciences was founded in 2016 and is based in South San Francisco, CA. www.culturebiosciences.com