Advancing CAR T-Cell Therapies with Clinical Trial Customization

Goran Marinkovic, Immunologist, Cerba Research

Goran Marinkovic obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Biology from Belgrade University, Serbia. After completing his PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 2014, Goran moved to Israel where he worked as a Postdoc at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Subsequently, Goran moved to Sweden where he was working on the development of immunomodulatory therapy for the treatment of myocardial infarction. For the past year and a half, Goran has been employed as an Immunologist at Cerba Research Netherlands.

Nele Langenaken, General Manager, Cerba Research

Nele Langenaken has over 25 years of experience in the Cerba Lab & Testing industry. She joined Cerba Research in 1998 and founded Cerba Research in the USA, of which she is still the General Manager. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Science from Ghent University.

Dr. Nithianandan Selliah, PhD, Global Director, Flow Cytometry, Cerba Research

Nithianandan Selliah’s professional work spans academia, the biotech/pharma sector and most recently CROs. His PhD research at the University of Kentucky focused on the effect of epinephrine in the modulation of T cell activation. After his PhD, he joined Dr. Terri Finkel’s lab at the National Jewish Medical Center to study the mechanism of bystander killing of CD4 T cells by HIV. This work continued at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Later, he conducted pioneering research in CAR T cells for HIV therapy under the mentorship of Dr. Richard Junghans at Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence, RI. He then moved to a biotech company to identify biomarkers for lupus disease utilizing flow cytometry. He then joined Celgene to work on a specific project to explore the therapeutic potential of red blood cells derived from the in vitro differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells.

In 2015, Dr. Selliah joined LabCorp Drug Development (formerly Covance) to help facilitate their expansion of flow cytometry supporting clinical drug development. He has developed and validated more than ten flow cytometric methods that were deployed in numerous global clinical trials. His work has been represented at the International Clinical Cytometry Society (ICCS) Annual Course and the International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry’s annual meeting, CYTO. He has contributed to recommendation papers in Cytometry B: Clinical Cytometry and Current Protocols in Cytometry as well as a chapter on receptor occupancy assays.

Dr. Karthikeyan Devaraju, PhD, Scientist, Cerba Reseach

Dr. Karthikeyan Devaraju joined Cerba Research in 2022 as Scientist, Cell and Gene Therapy R&D. Before that, Dr. Karthikeyan held scientific research positions related to cell and gene therapies for the brain using viral vectors, stem cells and non-viral delivery systems, at university research hospitals in Sweden and Switzerland; organoids with patient-derived stem cells at Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen, Netherlands; process and product development at Orchid Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals, India, and at an ATMP CDMO in the Netherlands. He holds a PhD in Stem Cells and Neurology from Lund University, Lund, Sweden.