Alex Lifei Yang, Ph.D.

Lead and contribute to multiple projects and teams Spearhead new discovery projects Supervise and mentor scientist and RAs, as well as indirect RAs via project teams • Antibody, TCE therapy development • Vaccine development • Leading internal team and managing external CRO • Cross functional team/department communication

• Lead the Ab discovery team to build and advance therapeutic Ab pipelines • Develop SOPs to be implemented in the team • Advance and establish new Ab discover platforms • Collaborate with multi-functional teams • Lead multiple Ab discovery projects; successfully delivered Ab leads for multiple projects

• Structure-guided soluble HIV Env trimers as novel immunogen • Develop and optimize liposome displaying HIV Env immunogens • Antibody engineering and characterization for gene and cell therapy (vector delivery and CAR-T) • Design and execute animal immunization with protein and Liposomes particles • Use multiple animal models to assess immunogenicity and efficacy of vaccine candidates • Single B cell isolation, SHM analysis and monoclonal antibody heavy and light chain cloning • Collaborate and lead projects with multi-functional international teams Served as principal investigator and been awarded a San Diego Center for AIDS Research (SD CFAR) Developmental Grant, NIH https://cfar.ucsd.edu/en/grants/previous-recipients/developmental/

Structure-based HIV envelope glycoprotein (Env) trimer development as novel immunogens, production and characterization of liposomes to display Env trimer, as well as characterization of immune responses elicited by these vaccine candidates in different animal models

• Led a team of scientists from multiple universities on developing HIV Env based vaccines using recombinant vaccinia virus (RVV) vector delivery platform • Developed and optimized the Viral vectors / VLP production and purification (TFF, SEC) • Developed immunological assays and characterized immune responses (B, T cells) in Rabbit and NHP • Developed and validated virus neutralization, ELISA, ELISpot, ICS, ADCC/ADCVI and Bio-Plex assays

Developed a robust system to produce virus-like particles (VLP) by stably transfected Drosophila S2 cells as a vaccine component against HIV-1 Developed virology and immunology assays to evaluate vaccines and antibodies against HIV-1 and Flu (H5N1) • Developed and optimized pseudovirus (HIV, influenza) and lentiviral vector production and neutralization assays • Developed and optimized the insect S2 cell culture in shaker flasks and disposable bioreactors (Wave bioreactor, GE) for virus like particle (VLP) production • Developed an appropriate downstream purification processes for VLP • Mice and Rabbits immunization and sampling, including gene gun (Bio-rad) • Developed and produced monoclonal antibodies by hybridoma technology • Developed virology and immunology assays: ELISA, Fluorescence microscopy, Mouse primary CD8+ and CD4+ T cell intracellular-cytokine staining assay, ADCC and ADCVI assays Conference Scholarship at AIDS Vaccine 2011 in Thailand Pfizer Scholarship 2013

Developed a novel platform to produce HIV virus-like particles (VLP) using stably transfected Drosophila S2 cells, as a desirable vaccine component. This novel and robust system overcomes many limitations associated with previous HIV VLP production. We performed in-depth and state-of-the-art analyses of the antigenic and immunogenic properties of HIV VLP. This work was highlighted as a technical advance by Faculty 1000 prime.