John Marken

Background

About John Marken

About me: Experienced scientist with broad range of skills in immunology research, molecular biology, cell biology, protein and antibody engineering, phage display, assay development, in vivo mouse models Recently at A-Alpha Biosystems, I imported phage display technology including antibody library development and phage screening resulting in the discovery of many key binders used for drug candidate development and large data sets used for training predictive AI models of protein-protein interactions. I have deep experience with phage display for antibody drug development and optimization in other settings. My work in the Rheumatology Division School of Medicine at the University of Washington focused on factors that may drive multi and self-reactive naïve B-cells to escape deletion and become antibody producing plasma and memory B-cells, including the role of Neutrophils and Plasmacytoid Dendritic cells. I also ran a preclinical drug candidate profiling study in immune system models derived from primary Lupus patient cells My large body of previous work in the Biotech industry focused on target discovery and novel biologic therapeutics development in immunology and oncology settings. Technical Highlights • Excellent experimental design skills • In vitro quantitative assay development, cell based assays, bead based and other solid phase assays, MSD/ELISA • Multi-parameter FACS, Live cell sorting, some high content high throughput microscopy • qPCR design and expression analysis • Modern methods of gene synthesis/construction, cloning, high throughput molecular engineering • Genome engineering and mutagenesis technology, TALEN, CRISPR, lentivirus, recombinase • cDNA /genomic DNA library generation and screening, expression/functional cloning • Antibody and protein engineering technology, molecular cloning of variable domains, binding affinity optimization, novel protein drug platform design and optimization • Phage display for cloning and optimization of peptide binding domains • Protein expression and purification from mammalian and bacterial systems • Stable cell line engineering and optimization both plasmid and virus based, vector design, cell selection, functional cloning • NGS RNA-seq with DE expression analysis (Deseq2/EdgeR/LIMMA) • Data and statistical analysis • Genome sequence database and other molecular/bioinformatics tools, DOE