The Promise and Challenges of Ultrasound-Mediated Delivery

Dr Isabelle Aubert works as a Senior Scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute, Professor and Co-Vice Chair of Wellness, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. She holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Brain Repair and Regeneration, and she is an elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She obtained her PhD in neurosciences, on brain plasticity in aging and neurodegenerative diseases, at McGill University in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery. As a Medical Research Council of Canada fellow, Dr Aubert completed her post-doctoral training on regenerative gene therapies for the brain at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Dr Aubert has over 30 years of expertise in regenerative gene therapies for the aging and diseased brain. At Sunnybrook, she leads the Brain Repair Group in evaluating the impact of focused ultrasound and blood-brain barrier modulation for the delivery of therapeutics to the brain, and on the plasticity of molecular, cellular and cognitive systems in animal models. Through collaborative work, Dr Aubert and team members are developing molecular, cellular and gene therapies that can halt neurodegeneration and promote regeneration, particularly when combined with magnetic resonance image-guided focused ultrasound in preclinical models of neurodegenerative disorders, specializing in Alzheimer’s disease.

For the past 30 years, Vincent Ling, PhD, led successful groups in diverse biotechnology fields including cell devices, protein engineering, biosimilars, stem cell differentiation, checkpoint inhibitors and molecular evolution of antibody scaffolds. He has held leadership positions in large, mid-sized and start-up environments, creating practical biotherapeutics. His current interests lie in novel drug delivery technologies, which includes drug particles, energy guidance and biomaterial scaffolds. At Takeda, Dr Ling currently serves as Senior Director within Search and Evaluation, Business Development, after directorship roles in external innovation and pharmaceutical sciences. Prior to Takeda, Dr Ling was Head of Biological Sciences developing cell therapies for wet AMD at Neurotech. He has held positions including Vice President at Dragonfly Sciences, managing all scientific operations and marketing functions, Director of Molecular Genetics at Adnexus (Compound Therapeutics), and other scientific roles in Discovery Research at Genetics Institute and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

Jérôme Marzinski is a seasoned medtech leader, board member and investor in Life sciences, having held a variety of senior roles over a more than 25-year career, with significant experience in scaling and exiting venture capital projects, private equity-funded businesses in the sector, and having completed 15 M&A transactions and raised over €50m of growth capital.  He is the CEO of OxSonics Therapeutics, a medtech spun off from the University of Oxford, which has developed SonoTran, an ultrasound-triggered drug delivery platform. Early efficacy and safety of the SonoTran was demonstrated in the first feasibility clinical trial run in Oxford, United Kingdom, on mCRC (metastatic colorectal cancer) patients.Most recently Jérôme was the Interim Chief Executive Officer of Cimon Medical, overseeing the CE mark clearance for the Company’s lead product under new Medical Device Regulations. He is currently the Chairman of Cimon Medical. Prior to this, he spent three years as Chief Executive Officer at Visiometrics (Trade sale completed to a privately held ophthalmic company in the UK), spent six years in senior positions at ev3, and was Chief Operating Officer at Vexim. Jérôme has an MA in corporate financing and accounting from the University of Lille, and in 2012 completed the TRIUM Global Executive MBA, jointly issued by New York University Stern School of Business, London School of Economics and Political Science, and HEC Paris School of Management.

Dr Per Walday is the CEO of EXACT Therapeutics since June 2022, a listed clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing a unique platform technology for ultrasound-based drug delivery. He has extensive experience spanning from research to commercialization of in vivo diagnostics, therapeutics and medical devices globally, including drug-device combinations within the field of oncology. As CEO of biotech organizations, Dr Walday has built effective organizations progressing drug delivery platform technologies into pipelines of assets, including late-stage clinical programs through FDA and EMA regulatory paths. Prior to this, he spent almost two decades in different positions within Nycomed Imaging, Amersham Health and GE Healthcare, spanning a range of positions, including Global Head Project Management, with responsibility for all development programs of new pharmaceutical products. These included R&D efforts within the field of ultrasound and microbubbles which paved the way for what would become years later EXACT Therapeutics Acoustic Cluster Therapy (ACT®). Dr Walday has an MSc in biology and a PhD in neurophysiology.