How to establish COVID-19 diagnostics and keep up with demand  

Joel A. Lefferts, PhD, HCLD, DABCC is an assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and Assistant Director of the Clinical Genomics and Advanced Technology (CGAT) Laboratory at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, New Hampshire and also serves as a medical director of the clinical laboratory at Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont, NH. Within the CGAT Laboratory, he leads the chromosome microarray and molecular infectious disease services, is responsible for evaluating new platforms and validating new clinical tests for infectious disease, oncology and genetic applications. He also is active in the laboratory’s next generation sequencing efforts, serves as IRB chair at DHMC, and is the director of the lab’s Molecular Diagnostics Fellowship program.

Steven Bogen MD PhD is the Medical Director, Clinical Chemistry Laboratory, Tufts Medical Center and Adjunct Professor of Pathology, Tufts University School of Medicine.  Dr. Bogen is an NIH-funded investigator and inventor/co-inventor on approximately 20 patents related to diagnostic testing technologies.  Of relevance to this webinar, the Clinical Chemistry laboratory that he oversees includes nucleic acid amplification testing for HIV, HBV, HCV, CMV, BKV, GC/CT, HPV, and most recently SARS-CoV-2 RNA.

Eric Chow holds a PhD from UCSF. He is the director of the UCSF Center for Advanced Technology, an open access technology facility and Head of Technology at the Laboratory for Genomics Research, a collaboration between UCSF, UCB, and GSK focused on CRISPR/Cas functional genomics. He has a background in NGS and has been involved in setting up an emergency COVID-19 testing lab at UCSF and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.

Eric Morreale holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from Boston College, and a BS in Biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts. For more than 15 years, he has held marketing and operational roles in the medical device and life sciences industries, with a focus on product development and commercialization. Currently, Eric holds the role of director of marketing at LGC SeraCare and has led the recent commercial launch of the company’s SARS-CoV-2 reference material solutions.

Kathleen Campau holds a PhD from University of Michigan and BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She leads R&D for the Petaluma, California site of LGC, Biosearch Technologies where the team focuses on oligonucleotide chemistry, fluorophore and quencher development, oligonucleotide based assay design including genotyping and pathogen detection applications, as well as methods for manufacture of highly modified or complex oligonucleotides.  Kathleen also led the recent commercial launch of Biosearch Technologies’ CDC-qualified probe and primer kits for SARS-CoV-2.

Russell Garlick, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer a LGC Seracare Life Sciences. Since 2012 he has been focusing on expanding the company’s technologies, R&D organization, and product development pipeline. Throughout his career he has worked on the development, regulatory approval, and launch of a variety of technologies and assays, including an HIV/AIDS patient management program, molecular genomics technologies, and HIV drug discovery systems. Prior to joining LGC Clinical Diagnostics, Dr. Garlick was co-founder of Life Sciences Group and served as CEO and CTO of Protein Forest, Inc. He has also held executive R&D positions at PerkinElmer Life Sciences and DuPont NEN Life Sciences.