Kathryn Austgen

Kathryn Austgen has a long history of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. Kathryn began their career in 2003 as a Summer Intern at Eli Lilly and Company, where they developed a compound immunogenicity assay using primary human immune cells, conducted pharmacokinetic studies with antisense oligonucleotides and therapeutic antibodies, and developed a fluorescent microscopy assay using Qdot conjugated to therapeutic antibodies. In 2005, they became a Graduate Student at UCSF, where they developed, optimized, and executed a complicated biochemical purification scheme to identify and characterize the factor responsible for tumor immune evasion in glioblastoma patients. Kathryn then moved to the Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research in 2011, where they characterized the immune response to enterovirus infection, and performed siRNA dissection of cytokine signaling pathways to determine importance in viral infection. In 2014, they joined GSK as a Drug Discovery Investigator, where they established deep understanding of innate immune host defense pathways critical during viral infection and gained insight into novel viral immune evasion strategies. Kathryn then moved to BlueRock Therapeutics in 2018 as an Associate Director, before joining Myeloid Therapeutics in 2020 as a Director. Most recently, in 2021, they joined Clade Therapeutics as an Executive Director.

Kathryn Austgen attended Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School from 1998 to 2001. Kathryn then went on to pursue a B.A. in Biology from Colby College from 2001 to 2005. Finally, they obtained a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences and Virology from the University of California, San Francisco from 2007 to 2011.