Is Drug Screening in 3D Ready for Automation?

Our Panelists

Dr. Terry Riss, Senior Product Manager, Cell Health, Promega Corporation

Dr. Terry Riss started the Cell Biology program at Promega Corporation in 1990. He managed the development of cell viability, cytotoxicity, apoptosis, and protease assay systems and lead efforts to identify and promote multiplexing of cell-based assays to determine the mechanism of cell death. He now serves as Senior Product Manager, Cell Health, involved in outreach educational training activities, including validating assay systems applied to 3D cell culture models. Terry is also an editor of the In Vitro Cell-Based Assays section of the Assay Guidance Manual hosted by The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the NIH.

Dr. Tim Spicer, Senior Scientific Director, Department of Molecular Medicine, Scripps Research

Dr. Tim Spicer is the Senior Scientific Director in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research. He has more than 30 years of experience in drug discovery, including ten years at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He is currently the director of HTS and discovery biology and co-directs the screening center at Scripps. Tim supervises HTS assay development & related efforts, including technology development funded through the NIH with an award for the “Advanced Development and Validation of 3-Dimensional Spheroid Culture of Primary Cancer Cells using Nano3D Technology”. He has authored >125 drug-discovery-related publications and is an inventor on 3 patents.

Dr. Jan Lichtenberg, Co-Founder & CEO, InSphero

Dr. Jan Lichtenberg is Co-Founder and CEO of InSphero – the largest biotech specialized in 3D cell-culture technologies for discovery and safety. Jan co-founded InSphero in 2009 and grew the company to 65 employees in Switzerland and the US while expanding the business to encompass all top 15 global pharmaceutical companies. Prior to InSphero, Jan had VP R&D and Product Management positions at Hocoma AG (medical robotics) and Uwatec (microelectronics). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Neuchâtel and managed a research group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich. Since 2021, he is a Board Member of the Society of Laboratory Science and Screening (SLAS).