Jay Harper

Company: AstraZeneca

Job title: Associate Director

Bio:

Dr. Jay Harper received his Ph.D. in Cell & Developmental Biology from Harvard University in 2000 and conducted postdoctoral research on the initiation of the angiogenic switch with Marsha Moses, Ph.D. in the Vascular Biology Department at Boston Children’s Hospital.  After joining Genzyme in 2006, he worked on advancing the anti-TGFb antibody, GC1008, through the pipeline and into clinical trials for cancer.  Additionally, he helped build their antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) capabilities through both core capability development as well as by leading specific ADC project teams.

He joined MedImmune/AstraZeneca in 2011 and since then has used his experience to progress AstraZeneca’s ADC platform and advance preclinical research programs towards the clinic.  He has been the project lead for a number of ADC projects and his team is helping to evaluate novel ADC technology to incorporate into AstraZeneca’s next gen ADCs.  Most recently, to enhance the therapeutic index of ADCs, he’s been collaborating with the AstraZeneca Translational Medicine team to characterize biomarkers from the tumor microenvironment that can be used to stratify patients and/or identify rational combinations based on the impact of ADCs on tumor biology.

He is the co-inventor on a number of patents, has been invited to chair sessions and speak at various conferences and is either a lead author or a co-author on several journal articles, reviews and book chapters.