Cellectis announced the appointment of Leopold Bertea, Ph.D., to the role of Senior Vice President of Technical Operations - Europe. His mission will be to ensure execution upon Technical Operation milestones in process development, analytical development, external supply, and the GMP Paris manufacturing facility that support the development and production of Cellectis proprietary product candidates. Dr. Bertea is based in the Cellectis Paris office and reports to Bill Monteith, Executive Vice President, Technical Operations. Dr. Bertea joined from CellforCure where he was General Manager and Site Head upon acquisition by Novartis in April 2019. He successfully refocused the Les Ulis site from a multiproduct CDMO affiliate of LFB to the new European Novartis site dedicated to Kymriah® autologous cell and gene therapy production, as well as tech transfer and production of new cell and gene pipeline projects for Novartis. Leopold Bertea joins Cellectis as a recognized biopharmaceutical leader at several pharmaceutical companies. He is also known for his expertise in biopharmaceutical production and development. First with Novartis, where he was in charge of commercial monoclonal antibody production, and later with Sanofi where he built up and led the first integrated Biologics CMC Platform, covering the company’s biologics pipeline. Dr. Bertea then covered roles as Vice President Bio-business & Governance for Sanofi’s Global Biotherapeutics, managing the collaboration projects with partners. He was also a member of the Sanofi global R&D Leading team and a senior Biologics Expert. Leopold Bertea holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from ETH Zürich.