Manuel Mohr
CEO D2B3, Inc.
Manuel Mohr is a biotechnologist with strong hands-on experience working in different pre-clinical biotechnology settings from Europe to the US. He is trained across a number of specialties including gene and cell therapy, CRISPR gene editing, protein and viral vector engineering, and next generation optical microscopy. He has applied this experience to clinical indications such as CNS and PNS neuropathies, ophthalmology, metabolic and auto-immune disorders, musculoskeletal malignancies, and oncology. As a scientist and entrepreneur, it is his goal to drive biomedical innovation to generate safe, effective, and accessible therapeutics and diagnostics for all of humanity.
As director of gene delivery engineering at CellInfinity Bio, Manuel worked on platform development, team and project management and corporate strategy, growing the company from 3 initial employees to a thriving well-funded 15 employee company. At Scribe Therapeutics – a bay area based in vivo CRISPR-gene therapy company – Manuel worked on engineering optimized CRISPR-delivery vectors. Across these early and growth-stage biotech start Manuel contributed to raising capital, monitoring progress and meeting milestones, negotiating collaborations, evaluating platform-disease, as well as acquiring and retaining talent. He advises senior biotech executives in the gene and cell therapy start-up space on strategy, CDMO-contract negotiations, and the strategic formation of alliances.
Manuel holds a PhD in molecular biotechnology from TU Munich in his home country Germany as well as a MSc and a PhD in Bio Systems Science and Engineering from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. He spent several years as a Research Fellow at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus and as Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University and UC Berkeley entering private biotech industry. Manuel has authored well over a dozen high impact publications and is an inventor on almost as many granted and pending patents.
Seminars
- Reassessing the limitations of TfR1-mediated delivery, including broad peripheral expression, systemic sink effects, tolerability concerns, and limited cell-type specificity and discussing whether alternative receptor targets such as CD98, IGF1R and peptide ligands can deliver improved CNS selectivity
- Comparing emerging delivery modalities including antibody shuttles, peptide-mediated carriers, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), viral vectors and other non-viral platforms, evaluating their ability to improve biodistribution, intracellular uptake, manufacturability and clinical translation
- Exploring both physical and non-physical approaches to overcoming the blood-brain barrier, including focused ultrasound, microbubble-assisted BBB opening and antibody-mediated modulation, while balancing enhanced CNS penetration with safety, reversibility and translational feasibility
- Debating which delivery strategies are most likely to enable systemic, repeatable and disease-specific oligonucleotide delivery for the next generation of CNS therapeutics
- Realigning current thinking around the need for CNS-selective delivery strategies beyond receptor targeting
- Explore, non-receptor-mediated biologics platform that enables CNS delivery and discover how preclinical rodent and early non-human primate data support its mechanism and safety profile
- Examine how this approach is being applied within D2B3’s pipeline, and ongoing studies to improve CNS delivery