John D. McMannis is currently a consultant in the area of Cell and Gene Therapy. Over the past thirty years, he has been involved in the academic and commercial industry, focusing on the manufacturing of clinical cellular products from Phase 1 all the way to Commercial products. Most recently, Dr. McMannis was employed at Mesoblast, Inc. as the Executive Vice President of Manufacturing. He directed the group overseeing the clinical and commercial manufacturing of Mesenchymal Progenitor Cells. Before then, he was a Professor of Medicine at UT MDAnderson Cancer Center, the Director of the Clinical Transplantation Laboratory, and the Technical Director of the Cord Blood Bank.
John has also been employed by Baxter, Cell Therapy Division, and COBE BCT (now Terumo BCT). Dr. McMannis received his Ph.D. in Immunology from Rush Univerity, Chicago, IL, and his undergraduate degree in Microbiology from the University of Notre Dame.