Andre Watson
Chairman and CEO, Ligandal
Peptides for Use in Targeting Payloads
Abstract
Abstract for this talk coming soon!
Bio
I am Founder and CEO of Ligandal, a genetic medicine company that uses nanotechnology to develop predictive targeted delivery systems as the roadway to personalized therapies.
We are a precision medicine biotechnology company with a broadly applicable technology that can be tailored to a variety of cell & gene therapy needs. The company’s mission is to enable precision and personalized medicine on a global scale.
Given that increasingly complex disease states require precise and custom-tailored medicine, much of our technology development has focused on combining gene therapy with targeting peptides to enable completely new paradigms in evolutionary medicine. My expertise lies in targeted gene delivery, nano- and biomaterials, computational modeling of peptides, binding simulations, immunoengineering, as well as CRISPR and TALEN based gene editing. At Ligandal, we have demonstrated peptide-based delivery of CRISPR, RNA, DNA, siRNA, and a range of genes or proteins to virtually any cell type.
My formal background is in Biomedical Engineering with a focus on Biomaterials Science and gene delivery. I started Ligandal when I was 22 and moved to Silicon Valley to gain support for developing the next generation of medicine. I am an inventor on 80 pending patents (21 granted, 5 allowed, remaining pending) across 16 patent families for AI approaches to discovery of therapeutic compounds, materials science and engineering approaches for drug and gene delivery, next-generation bioengineering techniques, synthetic vaccines, and delivery of nucleic acids and proteins with cell-specific targeting molecules. More recently, much of this work has been computational in nature, where Ligandal has pioneered the field of Predictive Interactomics; the study and engineering of precise targeting ligands for various cells, tissues, and organs. My personal mission is to bring about humanity's prosperity through enabling a world where we can program biological systems at will, and for good.
Outside of work, I am a competitively trained classical pianist and used to compete in powerlifting. Music has a very special place in my heart, and I love playing everything from Beethoven Sonatas to Chopin Ballades. I also love cooking and exploring the world.
To stay up to date with what we are doing, please see our website: www.ligandal.com