Berkeley Lights Forms Strategic Scientific Advisory Board Featuring Distinguished Experts

EMERYVILLE, Calif., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Berkeley Lights, Inc. (BLI), a company dedicated to creating transformational platforms for biopharmaceutical processes, today announced the appointment of five leading experts from top academic, research and life sciences and engineering organizations to its Strategic Scientific Advisory Board (SSAB). The SSAB serves as a strategic resource for Berkeley Lights as it continues to build out its product portfolio in the areas of drug discovery and development, and cell therapy manufacturing. 

The Berkeley Lights' SSAB Board members include:

• James Rothman, PhD, Sterling Professor and Chair of Cell Biology, Yale University; formerly Chief Scientist, GE Healthcare, and Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine (2013).
• Peter Ehrenheim, Chairman of Boule Diagnostics AB and Sophion A/S, formerly CEO and President of Life Sciences at GE Healthcare.
• Igor Khandros, PhD, founding CEO and Director of Berkeley Lights, past CEO and founder FormFactor, Inc.
• Richard Lerner, MD, Institute Professor, Cell and Molecular Biology, the Scripps Research Institute.
• Stephen Minger, PhD, Senior Consultant in Cellular Sciences and Regenerative Medicine, GE Healthcare Life Sciences; Director, SLM Blue Skies Innovations LTD.

Dr. Rothman, who will chair the SSAB and is also an independent Director of BLI, stated, "Berkeley Light's innovative manufacturing technology enables the selection and activation of the desired cells, assembling them one-by-one into precision medicines for testing and eventual clinical use. Instead of making drugs outside the body, why not make and deliver them continuously in the body? We are already seeing such engineered cells curing advanced cancers and I expect this is just the beginning of a golden age of cell biology and medicine."

"Berkeley Lights is facing an exciting growth phase as we introduce the Beacontm, our first commercial platform, and continue to engineer innovative technologies to automate biological processes. In building our SSAB, we sought out renowned experts whose deep domain knowledge and insight can help guide our company roadmap," said Eric Hobbs, Ph.D., chief executive officer of BLI. "The background and experience of our SSAB members is invaluable as we continue to build additional workflows on the Beacon platform, and deliver on our vision of helping scale cell therapy manufacturing to give all patients access to life changing therapies."

About Berkeley Lights:

?Berkeley Lights, Inc. (BLI) develops and commercializes solutions on which biological cell processes may be automated. BLI's transformative platforms enable a capability leap in single cell-by-cell differentiation, measurement and culture using nanofluidics to speed and automate a number of applications including protein discovery and development, synthetic biology, agriculture, and cell therapy manufacturing. The Beacontm* platform, launched in December 2016 for protein discovery and development, features workflows for antibody discovery and production cell line development.  BLI continues to leverage its cell processing capabilities by developing the first scalable, automated manufacturing platforms for cellular therapeutics to meet patient demand.

* For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

For more information, visit http://www.berkeleylights.com/.

SOURCE Berkeley Lights, Inc.