On Monday, February 8th, PROTECT co-hosted its third installment in the Collaboration for Innovation webinar series with the Michael J. and Ann Sherman Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship Education at Northeastern University. This webinar featured Dr. Shashi Murthy, Northeastern University and Dr. Sean Kevlahan, Quad Technologies, who presented, “From Lab Bench to Commercial Product: A Case Study of Quad Technologies & A Discussion of Commercializing Academic Discoveries.”
To view a recording of this presentation, please visit this WebEx link.
Biographies
Dr. Shashi Murthy
Shashi Murthy is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Founding Director of the Michael J. and Ann Sherman Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship Education at Northeastern University. He is also a Faculty Fellow at the Barnett Institute of Chemical & Biological Analysis at Northeastern and holds visiting appointments at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Shriners Hospital for Children, and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Outside Northeastern, Prof. Murthy is a member of the Features Advisory Panel of the American Chemical Society journal Analytical Chemistry.
Prof. Murthy is the recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award and the Søren Buus Award for Outstanding Research in Engineering at Northeastern University. He was recognized as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2016. Prof. Murthy has co-authored over 70 publications in the areas of microfluidic cell separation and biomaterials, is an inventor on 7 issued or pending patents, and a founder of Quad Technologies Corp., which has brought to market cell capture/release hydrogels designed in his laboratory.
Prof. Murthy earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering at MIT (2003) and his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University (1999) and joined Northeastern in 2005 following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2011 and to Full Professor in 2015. Prof. Murthy served as Associate Chair of the Chemical Engineering Department at Northeastern from August-December 2011 and as Acting Chair from January-August 2012.
Dr. Sean Kevlahan
Sean Kevlahan, is a product driven entrepreneur in the Life Science sector and specialist in stem cell biology. Dr. Kevlahan has received numerous awards including being one of the top-26 finalist in MassChallenge and a winner of the CASIS sidecar award. Dr. Kevlahan holds a B.S in biochemistry from Hofstra University and received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Northeastern University.
At Quad Technologies, we have developed a novel chemistry called Quickgel to which we can capture and release cells viably off of variety of different substrates. To this end, we are applying Quickgel to magnetic particles called MagCloudz to enable cell purification and allows the user to decouple the magnetic particles after their separation. We are actively pursuing the cellular immunotherapy workflow with our MagCloudz by enrichment of CD3+ T-cells, subsequent T-cell activation, and immediate decoupling of the magnetic bead contaminant. We believe that providing an upfront release mechanism for the magnetic particles can save a significant amount of manufacturing time and decrease COGS of the CAR-T workflow.