Credit: selvanegra / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Credit: selvanegra / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Panelists:
Ali Strtak, PhD
Product Manager, Organoids
Bio-Techne
Panelist
Ali Strtak, PhD
Ali Strtak, PhD,is product manager for organoids at Bio-Techne. Ali earned her PhD studying the mechanisms of enteric viral infections, using intestinal organoid models to understand how nonstructural viral proteins co-opt host pathways and boost replication, and how that, in turn, translates to the physical manifestations of disease. She published the first functional characterization of a virally encoded calcium ion channel in theCaliciviridaefamily. Optimizing culture conditions as well as calcium imaging protocols for that work gave her firsthand experience with how culture variability and reagent selection underpin and undermine reproducibility in organoid models. In her current role, she focuses on standardizing organoid culture to make the model more consistent experiment over experiment and more accessible to all researchers interested in getting into organoids, regardless of prior 3D culture expertise.
Fikri Birey, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Human Genetics
Emory University School of Medicine
Panelist
Fikri Birey, PhD
Fikri Birey, PhD,is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Genetics at Emory University School of Medicine, where he leads a research program focused on uncovering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of human brain development and neurodevelopmental disorders. His lab employs stem cell-derived brain organoids and assembloids to model disease-relevant processes, with particular emphasis on disorders such as autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia. Birey completed his PhD in genetics at Stony Brook University and postdoctoral research at Stanford University in the laboratory of Sergiu Pasca, MD, where he built the first assembloid platform and applied it to uncover previously inaccessible disease phenotypes and nominate novel therapeutics in Timothy syndrome. He also co-founded the Brain Organoid Hub at Emory, which serves as a central resource for scalable and standardized human brain organoid research. Through this work, Birey aims to bridge basic neurobiology with therapeutic discovery, advancing precision medicine for complex brain disorders.
Broadcast Date:Thursday, October 22, 2026
- Time:08:00 PDT, 11:00 EDT, 15:00 GMT
Complex biologics such as bifunctional antibodies are opening new therapeutic possibilities in oncology, but these molecules present significant challenges for manufacturing teams. Non-standard architectures can often translate to low expression and difficult developability, making cell line development a critical bottleneck between a promising sequence and a viable clinical candidate.
In thisGENwebinar, Joseph Shultz (vice president of technical development and manufacturing, Ottimo Pharma) and Imroz Ghangas (vice president of commercial sales, Asimov) discuss strategies for achieving high-performing clonal titers and advancing a dual-paratopic cancer immunotherapy from sequence to dosed patient in under a year. Attendees will learn about the unique attributes of Ottimo’s molecule and how a specialist partnership with Asimov accelerated the program. The presenters will also introduce the CHO Edge System, which combines Asimov’s proprietary GS knock-out CHO host, hyperactive transposase, library of characterized genetic elements, and AI-driven genetic design tools to routinely deliver clonal titers of 8-12 g/L.
A live Q&A session will follow the presentation offering you a chance to pose questions to our expert panelists.
Produced with support from:
