John Babcook

Biography

Mr. John Babcook has been Senior Vice President of Discovery Research at Zymeworks Inc. since March 22, 2016. Mr. Babcook served as the President and Chief Scientific Officer of Kairos Therapeutics Inc. He served as Vice President of Biologics at Centre for Drug Research and Development. He has over 20 years of experience in biomedical research and biologics development to CDRD, as well as first-hand experience in commercializing these technologies. He has made significant contributions to the international biotechnology industry. He worked at Amgen, Abgenix and ImmGenics and through collaborations with AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Abbott, Abbott BioScience, Millennium, CellTech, Curagen, Corixa, Agensys, Progenics and The Scripps Research Institute, he has participated in the development of over 100 therapeutic antibody programs. In 1988, he joined a team at the Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) at UBC where, he worked in the lab of BRC Director, he led the development of a technology known as the Selected Lymphocyte Antibody Method or SLAM (Babcook et al., 1996) which is used to screen large panels of immune B-cells to identify and rescue optimal antibody candidates for use as therapeutics. Based on this technology, he co-founded ImmGenics Pharmaceuticals in 1998. He continued to lead the research team as Associate Director of Research at Abgenix’s British Columbia site. He served as Principal Scientist at Amgen, where he led antibody-based cancer discovery and acted as the lead representative of Amgen British Columbia. In addition, he is an Author of internationally recognized scientific publications, an inventor on ten patents and has presented his work at international symposia. In 2009, he won the LifeSciences British Columbia “Innovation and Achievement” Award and was profiled in the 2010 Business in Vancouver Book of Profiles BC’s Business Leaders. He received a cross-appointment as an Adjunct Professor within the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University. In 2011, Mr. Babcook received an Honorary Doctorate of Technology from the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) for his contributions and achievements.

Research Interest

BIOCHEMISTRY,DRUG DESIGNING