Steven Dunn

Biography

I am a native of Birmingham, UK, and received an honors degree in Biological Sciences and a doctorate in Plant Biochemistry from the University of Exeter in the southwest of England (1988, 1992). After completing two postdoctoral projects, I spent several years in the multinational agrochemical sector as a Senior Scientist and team leader in herbicide and fungal crop pathogen target research. I crossed the great disciplinary divide in 2001 to pursue a career in the arena of bio–therapeutic drug discovery, initially as a Senior Scientist with human antibody phage display pioneers Cambridge Antibody Technology Ltd in Cambridge, UK, and subsequently as a Principal Scientist with Immunocore Ltd in Oxford, where I was privileged to play a role in the birth and development of the novel ImmTac pMHC-targeting technology and candidates currently in clinical development for Melanoma and HIV. In 2009 I accepted a position with Merck Serono S.A. in Geneva, Switzerland, as head of the therapeutic Immunoglobulin Display platform, where I contributed to various global pipeline antibody discovery programs targeting inflammatory and oncological diseases. Following the closure of Merck's Geneva site in 2013, I embarked on a very stimulating year in Zurich as a Principal Scientist for Molecular Partners AG, working on aspects of DARP in (Designed Ankyrin Repeat Protein) therapeutic lead generation, before joining George Coukos’ laboratory as a member of the Lausanne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Initially Associate Director of his lab, I was subsequently appointed Director of the Ludwig Antibody Core immunoglobulin discovery and engineering platform (LAbCore), an in vitro technology facility that I established and which has been operational since January, 2016. LAbCore’s raison d'être is to discover [de novo] scFv warheads and assist in the development of molecules of high potential therapeutic interest using a variety of soluble or cell-engineered formats (IgG, scFv-Fc, CAR, BiTE, TCR-like Ab etc). Additionally, I have a responsibility for overseeing the transition of such molecules into cell-based GMP procedures.

Research Interest

Design of novel molecules, tumor biology, tumor therapeutics, molecular recognition, immune reaction.