Team

 

Michael May is the President and CEO of CCRM. Michael completed his BASc in Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto in 1991. He then went on to complete his PhD in Chemical Engineering in 1998, at the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Michael Sefton. From 2000-2010, Michael was the President, Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Rimon Therapeutics Ltd., a Toronto-based regenerative medicine company developing novel medical polymers that possess drug-like activity. Michael sits on a number of Boards and advisory committees.

 

Lise Munsie is Vice President, Process Development at BlueRock Therapeutics. Lise oversees the process development team focused on bringing a diverse portfolio of iPSC derived cell therapies through the clinical and commercial pipeline. Prior to this role, Lise oversaw the iPSC platform at CCRM and OmniaBio, managing various iPSC reprogramming, gene editing, cell banking, scale-up and differentiation projects, focused on enabling these processes for manufacturing in GMP environments to produce clinically relevant doses of cell therapy products. Lise earned her PhD at McMaster University, focusing on drug discovery in neurodegenerative diseases. Following this, she completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Centre for Applied Neurogenetics at the University of British Columbia, where she focused on genetic causes of Parkinson’s Disease.

As Director, Process and Analytical Development at CCRM, Janet Rothberg leads the iPSC team focused on gene editing and iPSC reprogramming. Her team manages the development of early-stage technologies and enabling them for clinical and commercial readiness. The team has experience with novel technologies like single-cell plating and tracking clonality, and moving these unit operations from the process development lab into GMP. Janet’s work has focused on scale-up of iPSC-derived cell therapies and their translation from 2D to 3D. She has extensive experience in the development of iPSC differentiation protocols including cardiac, hepatocyte, pancreatic and blood cell lineages. Janet earned her PhD from the University of Ottawa in cellular and molecular medicine, focusing on blood cell development.