Florian Wurm

Dr. Wurm has been working in the field of manufacturing sciences and with CHO cells for the production of recombinant proteins in bioreactors for three decades. He was employed at Behringwerke (Marburg, Germany), was a visiting Scientist at Harvard University, and worked at Genentech (San Francisco USA) for 15 years during the earlier parts of his career. His work at Genentech contributed to the establishment of high-yielding manufacturing processes for some of today’s leading protein products (such as Herceptin®, Pulmozyme®, TNKase® and TPA). In 1995, he was appointed Professor for Biotechnology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology where he established a research program in process sciences. In 2001, he founded ExcellGene SA (Monthey, Switzerland) a contract manufacturing and research service company using animal cells in bioreactors for protein production. Dr. Wurm is a previous Chairman of the European Society of Animal Cell Technology. He has published more than 200 papers, is editor and reviewer for many scientific journals in biotechnology and is a frequent lecturer in the area of DNA to process/product in mammalian cells. Innovative contributions and insights to mammalian cell technology range from gene transfer and amplification, to host and recombinant cells with high performance in suspension cultures, to novel tools for cell culture such as single use bioreactors using orbital shaking as the mixing principle. He was trained as a biologist and geneticist in Germany, receiving his Biology degree and PhD from Justus Liebig University of Giessen.