ChBE Fall 2024 Seminar Series: Seongkyu Yoon

The Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering presents its Fall 2024 Seminar Series featuring Seongkyu Yoon, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Massachusetts Lowell, who will present “Critical Challenges and Advances in Recombinant Adeno-Associated Virus (rAAV) Biomanufacturing.” This seminar will take place on Wednesday, November 6, from 3:15–4:30 p.m. in room 131 (auditorium) of Perlstein Hall.

Abstract

Gene therapy is a promising therapeutic approach for genetic and acquired diseases nowadays. Among DNA delivery vectors, recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) is one of the most effective and safest vectors used in commercial drugs and clinical trials. However, the current yield of rAAV biomanufacturing lags behind the necessary dosages for clinical and commercial use, which embodies a concentrated reflection of low productivity of rAAV from host cells, difficult scalability of the rAAV-producing bioprocess, and high levels of impurities materialized during production. Those issues directly impact the price of gene therapy medicine in the market, limiting most patients’ access to gene therapy. In this context, the current practices and several critical challenges associated with rAAV gene therapy bioprocesses are addressed, followed by three research projects related: 1) developing inducible-scalable cell-line development, 2) transcriptomics-based media formulation for productivity improvement, 3) increasing ER protein processing gene expression for rAAV yield and full capsid ratio. These projects aim to provide the current state-of-the-art technology and perspectives to enhance the productivity of rAAV while reducing impurities during production of rAAV.

Biography

Seongkyu Yoon is a professor in the Francis College of Engineering at University of Massachusetts (UMass), Lowell which he joined in 2010 after 15 years in industry. Currently, Yoon is co-director of Massachusetts Biomanufacturing Center, the UMass site director of the NSF/IUCRC/AMBIC (Advanced Mammalian Biomanufacturing Innovation Center), and the co-principal investigator of NSF/AccelNet/IBioNe (International Biomanufacturing Network). Yoon also founded the Massachusetts-based Biomanufacturing Innovation Institute. Yoon is leading a research group of systems and synthetic biology while conducting research in platform process development for protein, gene and vaccine therapeutics. He completed his Ph.D. at McMaster University (Hamilton, Canada), and M.B.A. from Babson College (Wellesley, MA).