Christian Klein, PhD

CXO in Residence & Drug Hunter at Curie.Bio

Speaker

Christian Klein is CXO and Drug Maker at Curie.Bio since Oct 24. In this role he works with the founders of seed stage companies. He is specialized in the discovery, engineering and preclinical development of (bispecific) mAbs for immunotherapy. As a distinguished scientist, drug hunter, mentor and research project/program leader he made essential contributions during his 22 year tenure at Roche pRED to the preclinical development & approval of obinutuzumab incl development in autoimmunity, 1st Type 2 CD20 GlycoMab; project initiation & discovery of faricimab, 1st BsAb for ophthalmology; discovery & preclinical development of glofitamab, 1st 2+1 TCB, and preclinical R&D on 26 clinical stage BsAbs, immunocytokines/fusion proteins . He lead teams developing CrossMab®, 2+1 TCB, 4-1BB/CD28 costims, (PD1-cis) immunocytokines, next gen biologics, P329G-CAR®-T platforms, and contributed to research on teprotuzumab and Nutlin MDM2i. 1998 he received a diploma in biochemistry from University Tübingen as scholar of the Studienstiftung working at the MPI for Biology, and 2002 a doctorate from TU Munich working on p53/MDM2 at the MPI of Biochemistry and Roche. 2002 he joined Roche Pharma Research Penzberg as Postdoc in the Therapeutic Protein Initiative, 2003 became Lab Head and 2007 Department Head Discovery Oncology. 2010 he joined Roche Innovation Center Zurich as Head Oncology Programs, and took on additional roles as Department Head CIT-3 2015 and Site Head RICZ 2019. Since his habilitation in Biochemistry 2017 he is a lecturer at LMU Munich.
He contributed to 220 publications, 240 patent families, is associate editor of mAbs, antibodies, Fonc, Fimmu, Successful Drug Discovery, and co-organized Keystone's Antibodies as Drugs Symposium 2019.