Dr George Kopsidas

Biography

 Dr George Kopsidas is a Founding member of Imunexus and the original developer of the Imunexus technology platform. He is a practiced molecular biologist and biotechnologist with over 15 years experience in protein and antibody engineering (he has engineered 19 antibody products). He also has 5 years experience in the field of molecular ageing and mitochondrial diseases where he held a position on the editorial board for the Bio-Gerontology Journal, and well over 10 years experience elucidating the mechanisms of DNA repair. He held academic positions with RMIT and La Trobe Universities and held a Research Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health USA (NIH). He has had senior roles in the commercial sector as the Senior Scientist with the Centre for Molecular Biology and Medicine, the Director of Protein Technologies at Evogenix Ltd, and the Vice-President of Protein Technologies at both Arana Therapeutics and Cephalon Australia. He was the driving force behind the development of the technology platforms of these companies and has a proven track record for developing multiple commercially validated technologies. He was a foundation scientist at Evogenix and the main contributor to the development of their technology platform and product engineering approaches that were later adopted by Arana and Cephalon. He had a major role in the engineering of these company’s R&D pipeline products and continued to develop and expand their technology platforms. He also has a very strong track for developing drugs over multiple projects. He has multiple international publications and patents including joint patents with GSK and Vegenics around antibody therapeutics and has 64 publications and presentations at national and international conferences. He has a strong track record delivering back to investors in previous enterprises including the technical and product development leading to the Evogenix IPO, and the takeover of Evogenix by Peptech to form Arana Therapeutics. Recently he had founded and managed a successful biotechnology consulting company, Melicept, which consulted around protein scaffolds, antibody based therapeutics, biotechnology, protein engineering and molecular biology. He also developed strategic business plans, budgets and resource development and performed due diligence on accessible IP around platforms for novel immunotherapy approaches.

Research Interest

 Molecular Biology, Biotechnology