Using iPSCs and Genome Engineering to Build Disease Models

David Piper has led teams at Thermo Fisher Scientific for over 10 years in the development of products and services for cellular engineering, biochemical assays and cell-based assays for the screening of multiple target classes (ion channels, GPCRs, kinases, nuclear receptors, pathway profiling) and next generation solutions for drug discovery using iPSC-based approaches. These efforts are directed at generating more patho-physiologically relevant cell models through the use of reprogramming, stem cell culture, characterization and differentiation, genomic engineering and assay development. Currently, as an R&D Director for the Cell Biology and Synthetic Biology businesses, he leads teams that provide molecular biology and cellular biology services including cDNA Library synthesis, high-throughput cloning, CRISPR and TALN design and generation, LENTI virus generation, BacMam virus generation, cell engineering (multiple delivery and integration platforms), assay development (multiple detection formats), LentiArray™ CRISPR libraries and functional genomics screening using either siRNA or CRISPR based approaches.