Zhinan Xia
Chief Scientific Officer AbImmune Therapeutics
Dr. Zhinan Xia is the Founder and CSO of Abimmune Biotherapeutics LLC, a company focused on therapeutic antibody and mRNA drug discovery and development for oncology and autoimmune indications. He earned his Ph.D. molecular biology and biochemistry at College of Pharmacy University of Kentucky. After his PhD, Dr.Xia did his postdoc training at Harvard Medical School (HMS) on molecular immunology and become an Instructor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute—a HMS affiliated teaching hospital focusing on cancer. Dr. Xia has more than 26 years extensive biopharma/biotech industrial experience (including Pfizer and Moderna). Throughout his career, Dr. Xia has served as both founder and consultant across the life sciences and biologics R&D sectors, with a focus on therapeutic mRNA vaccine and mAb related drug development.
Seminars
Key questions include:
- How do you structure CDMO partnerships to balance speed, flexibility, and risk without overcomplicating your manufacturing network?
- What are the biggest misalignments between biopharma and CDMOs during scale-up – and how can they be avoided early?
- At what point should companies start designing for commercial-scale manufacturing, and how does that shape CDMO and supply chain decisions?
- How early, structured CDMO engagement can reduce development risk and shorten timelines for mRNA, neoantigen and personalised cancer vaccine programmes in cell & gene therapy pipelines
- Aligning process development and CMC expectations between biopharma and CDMOs to avoid scale-up failures and enable smoother translation from preclinical to commercial supply
- Defining effective partnership models for complex modalities, including tech transfer best practices, capacity planning, and managing variability in patient-specific manufacturing workflows
