Joanna Swain, PhD Senior Vice President, Protein Engineering and Molecular Sciences
Joanna comes to Repertoire with a wealth of experience in biologics drug development and building platforms for biologics discovery. She is driven by the idea of harnessing the physical processes underlying molecular recognition to engineer proteins and technologies that cure and prevent disease. At Repertoire, Joanna leads teams developing proprietary pMHC technology for antigen decoding and enrichment of T cells as well as teams engineering novel immunomodulatory protein-based and RNA/lipid nanoparticle-based therapeutics.
Prior to joining Repertoire in 2017, Joanna was a Senior Principal Scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in Biochemical Assay Development and Selections Technologies. There she led and provided technical expertise to dozens of discovery programs applying multiple novel modalities, including both mono-and bi-specific adnectins, antibodies and cyclic peptides. Notably, she engineered a myostatin inhibitor which is now in a registrational trial with BioHaven for spinal muscular atrophy. While at BMS, she also oversaw technology transfer of an in-licensed cyclic non-natural peptide display platform and introduced next generation sequencing technology to monitor selection output.
Joanna has co-authored 16 peer-reviewed manuscripts. She is an inventor on two awarded patents and holds a PhD in Pharmacology from Cornell University.