T & T Scientific University hosting three-day global and virtual conference this week
By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA
T & T Scientific Corporation, the Knoxville-based life science company founded in 2015 by two then University of Tennessee, Knoxville graduate students, has launched a new initiative.
Co-Founder Nima Tamaddoni, who also serves as Chief Executive Officer, and Alex Aust, T & T Scientific’s recently named Director of Business Development (see this recent teknovation.biz article), are the Co-Creators of T & T Scientific University (T&TSU) that will be holding its first event starting Wednesday.
Titled the “Global Conference on Lipid Nanoparticles and Other Non-Viral Nanocarriers,” the three-day event will be delivered on the Microsoft Teams platform from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. EDT each day. It ends on Friday, and registration for the three days is $240. There is a 20 percent discount for individuals who have an .edu email address.
“I expect a minimum of 500 attendees,” Tamaddoni told us in an email of Saturday. Earlier, in a recent meeting, he was exuberant is explaining the motivation for launching T&TSU and the caliber of speakers from across the globe that he and Aust have recruited for the inaugural event. Tamaddoni emphasized that the initiative is complementary to but separate from the core business that he co-founded six years ago with Graham Taylor.
In a video available at this link and another here, Aust explains the motivation behind the launch of T&TSU and this week’s conference, starting with the advent of both COVID-19 and CRISPR-Cas9 and how those intersect with T & T Scientific’s on-going work.
“Lipid-based therapeutics have been front and center in the development of therapeutics to treat relevant and various diseases,” he says. “Liposomal formulations have only just begun to provide their whole benefit to society.” T&TSU and this week’s conference are helping build a “community of both academic and industry executives convened to talk about targeted drug delivery.”
Each day of the virtual conference has a specific theme. On Wednesday, it is “Drug Delivery Systems.” Thursday’s topic is “Complexing API with Delivery Systems,” with the final day focused on “Commercialization and Manufacturing of Complex Pharmaceuticals.” With the key themes, there will also be a well-recognized name from the academic or industry world delivering a keynote to begin that day’s program.
Those speakers and their topics are:
- August 4 – Gaurav Sahay, an Associate Professor at Oregon State University who is described as “one of the world’s leading scientists in the field of pharmaceutical formulations for vaccines and therapeutics.” His topic is “Lipid Nanoparticle mRNA Vaccine and Therapeutic Formulation Technologies.”
- August 5 – Michael McCaman who has more than 25 years of experience working for companies such as Intellia Therapeutics Inc., Phoenix BioProducts and Services, Lonza Inc., and Halozyme Therapeutics. His topic is “Lipid Nanoparticle Gene Therapies and Vaccines: From Development to Manufacturing.”
- August 6 – Greg Troiano who has more than two decades of experience in manufacturing at companies including Pfizer and Seer. Currently with Translate Bio, he will address the topic of “Overcoming Challenges of Clinical and Commercial Supply Chain for Complex Nanoparticle Formulations.”
The keynotes will be followed by a series of symposium sessions that are expected to run 30 minutes. At 5:30 p.m. each afternoon, there will be a networking session.
