Speakers
Mr. Ethan Knowlden, VP at Novartis Diagnostics
Mr. Knowlden serves as Head of the Business Development and the Legal functions for Novartis Diagnostics. He has served in this duel capacity since March 2009. Mr. Knowlden has served Novartis Diagnostics and its predecessor, Chiron Corporation, in various capacities over the past ten years, including serving as legal counsel for its vaccines operations in London.
Mr. Knowlden joined Chiron in February 2000. He has also held positions with Paging Network, Inc. and the law firms Gardere & Wynne, L.L.P., and Hughes & Luce, L.L.P. He began his professional career at The First Boston Corporation, based in New York.
Mr. Knowlden has a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.
Dr. Tue Nguyen, VP at One World Health
John is a biotechnologist and entrepreneur in the field of drug delivery, particularly pulmonary delivery and peptide and protein delivery. Prior to founding Dance in 2009, he was co-founder of Inhale Therapeutics (now Nektar), where he served as a Director, Head of Research and Chief Scientific Officer from 1990-2008. Before that he led the drug delivery group at Genentech (l985-1990), where he demonstrated the feasibility of systemic delivery of large molecules through the lungs. At Inhale/Nektar he initiated and helped lead the development and FDA approval of the first inhaled insulin product. Prior to joining Genentech, Dr. Patton was a tenured professor at the University of Georgia. Dr. Patton received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of California, San Diego, and held post-doctoral positions in biomedicine at Harvard Medical School and the University of Lund, Sweden. He serves on scientific advisory boards for Penn State University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Aridis Pharmaceuticals as well as the executive boards of Dance, Halozyme, Activaero, and Pleiades Cardiotherapeutics. He is author or coauthor of more than100 publications and inventor or co-inventor of more than 38 patents.

Dr. Wei-Kuang Chi, VP at Development Center for Biotechnology
Dr. Wei-Kuang Chi, Vice President and Director of CGMP Biopharmaceutical Pilot Plant Facility, Development Center for Biotechnology (DCB) obtained his M.S in Engineering and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. Dr. Chi has over 24 years of experience in biotechnology process development, including mammalian cell culture (CHO, NS0, hybridoma, 293 cell, insect cell etc.), recombinant yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Pichia pastoris ), recombinant Escherichia coli, online mass spectrometric off-gas analysis for fed-batch process control, and cell disruption bioseparation technology. He is responsible for the establishment of DCB’s new multi-product CGMP Biopharmaceutical Pilot Plant Facility (BPPF), including design, equipment procurement/installation, validation, GMP quality system setup, analytical method validation, cleaning validation, process validation, and GMP production. This facility CGMP certified by Taiwan Department of Health (DOH) on December 2005 and received DMF with USA FDA on March 2006. The CGMP Biopharmaceutical Pilot Plant Facility has joined Boehringer Ingelheim Biopharmaceuticals Production Alliance Network since May 2007. This CGMP facility has been used to conduct bioprocess scale-up/development and to produce clinical trial material for protein drugs (monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins), at least five products have been produced under GMP for IND submissions for Phase I/II clinical trials, has received four IND approvals from US FDA, Canadian health authority and Taiwan Department of Health. There are also over ten ongoing projects from US and Asia-Pacific clients on process development leading to GMP productions for recombinant proteins and monoclonal antibodies. The DCB CGMP BPPF has recently received Best CMO award on March 29, 2011.
Mr. James Chapman, Partner at Foley and Lardner, LLP
Mr. James Chapman is a Partner in Foley & Lardner’s Silicon Valley office. His practice focuses on Mergers and Acquisitions, Venture Capital and Securities law. Mr. Chapman has been involved in over 200 Mergers, Acquisitions and financing transactions. He also has extensive experience in international business transactions. Mr. Chapman assists U.S. companies to acquire China-based companies, structure investments in China and complete technology transactions. He also represents Chinese companies in public and private securities offerings and investments in the U.S. Mr. Chapman is a frequent speaker at China-focused events and has published many articles on doing business in China including the two recent articles, “A Brave New World: Technology Transfer to China,” The Licensing Journal, August 2011 and “M&A in China-Anatomy of a Deal in the Middle Kingdom.” Corporate Finance Review, Sept.-Oct. 2011.
Dr. Guo-Liang Yu, CEO of Epitomics
Guo-Liang Yu, Ph. D is President and CEO, Epitomics Inc., an emerging biotech company with 250 employees dedicated to the development of innovative monoclonal antibodies for discovery, diagnostics and therapeutics. Epitomic is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and has a wholly owned subsidiary in Hangzhou, China. Guo-Liang was Senior Vice-President of Research and Development at Mendel Biotechnology Inc. where his team analyzed the function of a complete set of plant transcription factors by knock-out and over-expression in planta. Guo-Liang was a Senior Scientist at Human Genome Sciences Inc. where he discovered the target Blys for the lupus drug belimumab.
Guo-Liang was trained at Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow and earned a Ph.D. degree with Nobel Laureate Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn in Molecular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley and B.S. degree in Biochemistry from Fudan University in Shanghai.
Guo-Liang is a co-inventor of more than 150 patents and a co-author of 36 scientific articles. Guo-Liang is the founding president of Chinese Biopharmaceutical Association and services several professional organizations in the US and China as a member of the board of directors or board of advisory.
Dr. John Lin, Executive Director at Pfizer
Dr. Lin joined Rinat Neuroscience in 2002 as it started as a spin-off from Genentech. He has been with Pfizer since Pfizer acquired Rinat Neuroscience in 2006. His main interest is on discovering and developing novel therapeutics for age-related health problems, including neural degeneration, inflammation and metabolic disorders. Dr. Lin earned his MD from the College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, his PhD from Harvard University, and completed the postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech.
Dr. Wenjun Ouyang, Senior Scientist at Genentech
Dr. Ouyang is currently a senior scientist and group leader in the immunology department, Genentech, Inc. His group is focused on identifying and developing novel therapies for the treatment of various autoimmune diseases. His group has brought several new therapeutic candidates, such as Rontalizumab, from early research into clinical trials. His research is interested in understanding the biology of T helper cells and their effector cytokines in autoimmune diseases. Before he joined Genentech, Inc. he had obtained his BS degree from Peking University (1991), and Ph.D. (1999) and post-doctorate training (2001) from Washington University, School of Medicine, in St. Louis.
Dr. Yuker Wang, Director at Affymetrix
Yuker is currently a Director in Product Development at Affymetrix. The main focus of his efforts in the past few years is to develop a robust SNP-based copy number platform for cancer discovery and diagnosis. Yuker was a senior scientist at a start-up company ParAllele before it was acquired by Affymetrix in 2005. He received a PhD degree in Chemistry from New York University and did postdoctoral research at the Genetics Department of Stanford University, School of Medicine.
Dr. Howard Chang, Associate Professor at Stanford University
Howard Y. Chang M.D., Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Dermatology at Stanford University School of Medicine and Early Career Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Chang received his A.B. degree from Harvard College, his Ph.D. in Biology from MIT (with Prof. David Baltimore), and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed Dermatology residency at Stanford University and postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Patrick Brown, and joined the faculty in 2004. His research addresses how individual cells know where they are located in the human body, which is important in normal development and in cancer metastasis. Chang discovered that a new class of genes, termed long non-coding RNAs, can control gene activity throughout the genome, illuminating a new layer of biological regulation. Chang’s honors include the Damon Runyon Scholar Award, American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine New Faculty Award, elected membership to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, the CERIES Award, and the Alfred Marchionini Research Prize.
Dr. Rose Romeo, Senior Director at Hunter Laboratories Inc
Rose Romeo is a board certified clinical chemist who has worked in both the medical device and clinical laboratory industries for over 20 years. Her areas of expertise include strategic and logistical laboratory operations, clinical trial planning and implementation, quality systems implementation and regulatory submissions. Past positions have included UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital, SurroMed, XDx and Roche Molecular Systems.
Rose is currently the Laboratory Director at Hunter Laboratories, a reference clinical laboratory located in Campbell, CA. Rose’s duties include working closely with both the Medical Director and Chief Operating Officer to ensure alignment of laboratory quality operations with the strategic and logistical objectives of Hunter Laboratories. Rose received her graduate degree in pathology & molecular biology from Albany Medical College (Albany, NY) and is a board certified by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry and the National Registry of Clinical Chemistry. She is also licensed as a clinical chemist by the State of California. She is an active member of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry and the National Academy of Clinical Biochemists and is also a member of the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society.
Dr. Youe-Kong Shue, President and CEO of Optimer Biotechnology Inc.
Dr. Youe-Kong Shue, joined Optimer Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in June 2000 as Senior Director of Chemistry and has served as Vice President, Clinical Development since 2006. In 2009, he assumed additional responsibility as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Optimer Biotechnology, Inc, in Taiwan, of which Optimer is a majority owner. Dr. Shue started his career in 1983 at Abbott Laboratories, where he conducted neuroscience research. From 1993 to 1996, he worked for Cubist Pharmaceuticals. In 1996, he moved to AstraZeneca, where he led a drug development program to identify novel therapies to treat H. pylori infection. Dr. Shue received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh and did his post-doctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. James Larrick, Founder, CEO, Scientific Director of Panorama Research Institute
Dr. Jim Larrick has an international reputation in biotechnology and pharmaceutical drug development, having written or co-authored eight books, over 220 papers/chapters and fifteen patents. He also serves on the editorial board of six journals. After an MD and PhD degrees from Duke University School of Medicine and a post doctoral fellowship in the Stanford Cancer Biology Research Labs, he joined Cetus Immune Research Labs and pioneered the use of PCR for the construction of recombinant antibodies. Later on, Dr. Larrick founded the Palo Alto Institute of Molecular Medicine and has started up more than a dozen biopharmaceutical companies. Currently he serves on the Boards of five early stage companies and continues to pursue venture activities through partnering with CMEA.