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Covid Testing in a Vaccinated Population: Needed or Obsolete?

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

While the number of fully vaccinated people in the U.S. continues to rise and infection numbers remain relatively low, demand for testing has decreased. Schools and many businesses, however, have implemented testing procedures to accelerate a return to campuses and offices. Germany just mandated employers to offer free testing.

Will testing remain an essential tool in the fight against the pandemic, especially as new strains evolve around the Globe? What level of testing is useful to help avoid new waves of infections? Can tests help us monitor for new variants? Should vaccinated people participate in regular testing or be excluded? What are best practices in testing and what kinds of tests are best for different contexts?

We will address these and other questions and discuss whether businesses, educational institutions and cultural organizations consider testing vital to stay open or to bring employees, students or customers back into their buildings.  This interactive panel discussion brings together scientists, experts and representatives from all sides of this issue.

This is the third collaboration in our transatlantic webinar series on the Covid pandemic between the German Consulates in Boston and San Francisco as well as the GABC Boston and GABA Northern California.

Panelists

  • Galit Alter, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
  • Ian Law, Chief Information Officer, San Francisco Airport
  • Lisa Regan, Vice President, Analytical Development, Bayer HealthCare
  • Kathrin Röschel, Head of School, German International School of Silicon Valley

Moderator:

  • Johannes Frühauf,  MD, PhD, Co-founder, President, LabCentral | CEO, Cambridge Biolabs

Format:            Virtual Panel Discussion
Platform:         Zoom Webinar
Length:            One hour
Date:                Wednesday, May 26th, 10AM PT | 1PM ET | 7PM CT


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Panelists & Moderator
Johannes Fruehauf, MD, PhD, Co-founder, President | CEO, Cambridge Biolabs 

Johannes Fruehauf (MD PhD) has a background as a physician working in diverse health systems. In his15+ years as a serial biotech entrepreneur, Dr. Fruehauf has dedicated much of his professional endeavors to the mission of re-defining life science entrepreneurship and building start-up ecosystems.

He is the Founder and President of LabCentral, the preeminent private/public partnership model for life science incubator space, while also serving as CEO for BioLabs, the largest provider of laboratory co-working space for startups nationwide. LabCentral and Biolabs currently are home for over 300 startups in 8 cities and companies started within this network now routinely account for over20%of all Seed and Series A venture capital invested in life sciences in the US.

Johannes is founder and General Partner of Mission BioCapital (MBC). In his role at MBC, he sources, diligences, and leads new life-science investment transactions and represents the fund on the board of a number of MBC portfolio companies.

Dr. Fruehauf studied medicine in Germany and France, while also conducting field work in Africa (Zimbabwe and Guinea). He graduated from University of Frankfurt and received his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg. Johannes is the author of over 30 peer reviewed publications and is named inventor on 9 patents.


Dr. Galit Alter,  Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Group Leader at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard.

Dr. Alter’s work focuses on the development of systems biology tools to define the correlates of immunity against infectious diseases that ravage the globe. To this end, Dr. Alter developed a novel, ever-evolving approach to probing humoral immunity that she termed ‘systems serology’. Dr. Alter uses this novel -omics platform to profile the remarkable diversity of antibodies generated in response to pathogens or vaccines and their abilities to leverage the immune system to fight disease. Capturing hundreds of datapoints, this approach provides unprecedented resolution into the unique humoral immune fingerprints that exist among individuals. Her group then interrogates these antibody profiles, using machine learning and other high dimensional tools to define the specific antibody profiles/features that track with favorable patient outcomes in diseases such as HIV, Ebola virus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, malaria, etc. These data raise often unexpected hypotheses on antibody mechanism of action that have led to the accelerated understanding of new therapeutic or vaccine-design approaches.

Through this work, Dr. Alter seeks to advance rational vaccine design as well as begin to define the rules by which vaccines may fully leverage the breadth of functionality of the humoral immune response. By increasing the understanding of humoral immunity, she aims to expand the focus of vaccine development from effective antigen design to include the frequently overlooked role of antibodies in directing innate immune activity. This novel direction in systems immunology also may point to innovative engineering strategies to enhance the bioactivity of the monoclonal therapeutics aimed at selectively driving clearance, control, or eradication of diseases beyond those caused by infectious agents, including malignancies and autoimmune disorders.

Most recently, Dr. Alter has become particularly interested in the role of post-translational modulation of antibody functionality, via alterations in the glycans that are added to antibodies. Like all glycoproteins, antibody glycosylation changes rapidly during inflammatory diseases. Interestingly, these changes in glycosylation have direct effects on tuning antibody effector function. Dr. Alter’s work points to directed changes in antibody glycosylation linked to disease control. Understanding the rules by which antibody glycosylation, and more broadly all protein glycosylation, is controlled to direct immunologic activity may unlock new avenues to manipulate antibody function in a targeted manner through vaccination.

Dr. Alter is a two-time recipient of the prestigious MGH Research Scholars Award, and she was elected a member of the American Association of Microbiology in 2019. Dr. Alter received a BSc and PhD at McGill University and completed postdoctoral training in the Partners AIDS Research Center at MGH.


Ian Law, Chief Information Officer, San Francisco Airport

Ian is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). His focus is on the transformative potential of technology in industry and the leadership of change. He is a current and former chairperson of airport industry committees and working
groups and is a member of Airports Council International’s World IT Standing Committee. He holds Computer Science (BSc) and MBA degrees. He has worked in various information technology and business change, transaction and operations roles in both the public and
private sector. Prior to moving to the United States, Ian lived in Ireland, Germany and the United Kingdom.


Lisa Regan, Vice President of Analytical Development, Bayer

Lisa Regan is the vice president of analytical development and acting head of biologics development at Bayer, Berkeley. The organization manages the development of biologics, including gene therapy, from preclinical to commercial launch, clinical manufacturing Phase I to Phase III, analytical development, QC testing and release, and formulation development at Bayer, Berkeley. She joined Bayer in 1998. Regan graduated from LeMoyne College, Syracuse NY with a bachelor’s in chemistry and received her doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and dentistry, Rochester, NY.


Kathrin Röschel | Head of School | German International School of Silicon Valley

Kathrin Roeschel is Head of the German International School of Silicon Valley (GISSV). Arriving in March 2020 she led the school’s transition to distance learning formats due to the pandemic after not even two weeks on the job. Kathrin is a dedicated educator with a long record of teaching and leadership experience in international schools that include the German-American John F. Kennedy School and the Gail S. Halvorsen School in Berlin, as well as German International Schools in Washington, DC and now Silicon Valley. She holds an MS in Math and Physics from Humboldt-University in Berlin, spent a research semester at City College of New York, published in math didactics and is author of several Math Books for Middle and High School. As Head of GISSV she has been responsible for reopening the school safely and implementing a testing strategy for teachers and students.


This event is a cooperation between