Dr George Kopsidas

Dr Kopsidas is a Founding member of Imunexus and the original developer of Imunexus’ technology platform and product pipeline. He is a practiced molecular biologist and biotechnologist with over 23 years’ experience in protein and antibody engineering (he has engineered 26 potential antibody products). He also has 5 years’ experience in the fields 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 senior lecturer positions with RMIT and La Trobe Universities and held a Research Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health USA (NIH). In the commercial sector, he held senior roles as the Senior Scientist with the Centre for Molecular Biology and Medicine, the Director of Protein Technologies at EvoGenix Ltd, and the Vice-President positions 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 a number of 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 also has a very strong track for developing drugs over multiple projects with a major role in the engineering of these company’s pipeline products while he continued to develop and expand their technology platforms. He has multiple international publications and patents around antibody therapeutics including joint patents with GSK, Teva and Vegenics (now Opthea). 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 Pty Ltd, which consulted around therapeutic targets, 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.