Yvonne Genzel
Yvonne Genzel is a senior scientist in the Bioprocess Engineering group at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems (Magdeburg, Germany) since 2001, and is leading the upstream processing team focusing on virusproduction with mammalian cells. In 2009, she received her habilitation (PD) in “Upstream processing issues in influenza vaccine production using animal cell technology" at the Otto-von-Guericke-University, Magdeburg. With more than 90 peer-reviewed papers on cell culture-based virus production and analytics on this process, experience has been demonstrated.
Before changing to red biotechnology Dr. Genzel had her interests in white biotechnology, as she obtained her Ph.D. in biocatalysis at the University of the Mediterranean, Marseille, France in 2000. Also during her studies of "Technical Biology" at the Technical University Stuttgart, Germany, she focused on biocatalysis. In 2013, she was elected to become an Executive Committee member of the European Society of Animal Cell Technology (ESACT), where she was secretary for the term 2015-2017. Since 2016, she co-organizes the 3-day ESACT course on “Cell culture-based viral vaccines”. Intensified viral vaccine manufacturing using suspension cell lines in perfusion systems (hollow-fiber based, acoustic or inclined settler), in two-stage bioreactors or hollow fiber bioreactors are currently of main interest. Additionally, macrocarrier systems using packed bed reactors for adherent cells are tested. First steps of downstream processing are evaluated to move towards process integration as early as possible. By considering different viruses, such as influenza, Modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA), yellow fever, Zika as well as afusogenic oncolytic virus (VSV-NDV), experience and data for a knowledge platform is collected to bring process development for applications in vaccines and virotherapy(gene and cancer therapy, defective interfering particles (DIPs) as antivirals) towards next-generation manufacturing.