Bruce Thompson, Ph.D. is currently the CEO of Kincell Bio, LLC., a newly formed cell therapy CDMO focused on supporting the CMC needs of early phase startup biotechs and academic spinouts.
Prior to his role with Kincell Bio, LLC., he was Vice President and Technical Lead for the Cell Therapy Franchise at Resilience, Inc., where he helped to build the development and GMP manufacturing capabilities and served as a technical advisor both internally and externally. He has over 18 years of CMC strategy, product development and cell therapy manufacturing experience. In his first startup role, he was Vice President of Process Sciences at Lyell Immunopharma, where he was responsible for Process and Analytical Development, as well as tech transfer of processes and methods to a newly built state-of-the-art cGMP facility. Prior to Lyell, Bruce served as the Sr. Director of the Therapeutic Products Program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), where we led GMP manufacturing of cell and gene therapy products. He was responsible for supporting >15 active clinical programs and contributed to the filing of 6 INDs for various cell therapy programs.
As part of his early career development, Bruce spent nearly 10 years at Pfizer in the Pharmaceutical Sciences division where he gained expertise in analytical and process development. He led several CMC development teams, gaining significant drug development experience in monoclonal antibodies and vaccine antigens and was responsible for building the CMC team at Pfizer that partnered with the French companies, Servier and Cellectis, on the development of the TALEN-mediated allogeneic CAR-T CD19 (UCART19) programs in the EU and US (assets later became the basis for Allogene). Bruce also has deep expertise in the development of analytical control strategies, potency assays and heightened characterization packages for the large molecules (e.g., biologics, bi-specifics, vaccine antigens), nucleic acid and cellular therapy products.
Bruce received his B.A. in Biology, an M.S. in Biochemistry from The Ohio State University and Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Louisville.
At the Wyss, Bruce is a member of the Wyss Mentor Hive who brings expertise in cell and gene therapy development.
The Wyss Mentor Hive is a mentoring program that invites investors and business professionals with significant early stage translational experience, clinical and regulatory experts in driving therapeutic and device development, and serial entrepreneurs with a track record of success to work closely with Wyss entrepreneur teams on startup formation and technology commercialization. Mentors provide feedback to founders and entrepreneurs, while also demonstrating commitment and leadership in the Wyss innovation community.