Dominick Vacante, PhD Janssen R&D, LLC

Dominick A.Vacante, Ph.D. has been with Janssen R&D, LLC since 2009 and is a subject matter expert in virology, TSEs and mycoplasamas, providing support for pharmaceutical development and marketed products. He has responsibility for CMC strategy, viral clearance, cell banking and testing, and development of monoclonal antibody and microbial products. Prior to that, he was at Ceregene, Inc. developing gene therapy products for neurological diseases leading process development, the contract manufacture of viral vectors, DNA plasmids and delivery devices; in-house quality control, assay and vector development. Prior to that, he was at BioReliance developing new assay technologies, starting up a viral contract manufacturing facility and process development. Earlier in his career at BioReliance, he was study director for virus detection assays, virus clearance studies and virus production. Prior to that, he was at the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke in the Infectious Diseases Branch researching the molecular neurovirology of human polyomaviruses (JCV, BKV) and HIV. He earned his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from the University of Illinois in Chicago and his B.A. degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Northwestern University.