Plenary Speakers
David T.W. Wong , D.M.D., D.M.SC.
Professor
Director of the UCLA Center for Oral/Head & Neck Oncology Research (COOR), USA
David T.W. Wong DMD, DMSc is Professor and Director of the Oral/Head and Neck Oncology Research Center at UCLA. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), Fellow of AADR, past member of the ADA Council of Scientific Affairs, and the past president of American Association of Dental Research (AADR). He is the current chair of the NCI Liquid Biopsy Consortium and past chartered member and chair of the NIH CSR Molecular Cancer Diagnostics and Classification (MCDC) study section.
Plenary Speakers
Prof. Yasuhiko Tabata
Professor Emeritus, Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Japan
Professor, Cell Biotechnology Group, Graudate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Japan
Former President, the Japan Society of Drug Delivery System (JSDDS)
Dr. Yasuhiko Tabata is the Professor Emeritus, Kyoto University and a Special Professor (full-time) of Tabata’s group ”Cell Biotechnology”, Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, and guest professors at the Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Engineering of 17 different universities. He received his BD in Polymer Chemistry (1981), Ph.D. (1988) in Technology, D.Med.Sc. (2002), and D.Pharm. (2003) all at Kyoto University. He was a Visiting Scientist at the MIT (Professor Robert Langer) (1991-92). He has published 1,732 scientific papers including 146 book chapters and review articles and has 130 patents. He received the Young Investigator Award (1990), the Scientific Award from the Japanese Society for Biomaterials (2002), the Scientific Award from the Japan Society of Drug Delivery System (2011), Chandra P. Sharma Award of the International Society of Biomaterials & Artificial Organs (2011), the Scientific Award from the Japanese Society for Regenerative Medicine (2014), Merit Award Winners for Industry-Academia-Government Collaboration, President of Science Council of Japan Award (2016), Outstanding Scientist Award of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society - Asian-Pacific Chapter (TERMIS-AP) (2018), TERMIS-AP Excellent Achievement Award (2022), and several awards.
Dr. Tabata is the president of the Japan Society of Drug Delivery System (JSDDS), the board member of the Japanese Society of Regenerative Medicine (JSRM), the Japanese Society for Biomaterials (JSB), and TERMIS-AP or the councilor of several academic societies. He is a fellow of WBS, TERMIS, CRS) or the New York Academy of Science, AIMBE, and FTERM.
His research is very interdisciplinary in nature and brings together the fields of polymer chemistry, pharmaceutical science, biology, and basic and clinical medicines. His research keywords are biomaterials, drug delivery system (DDS), tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, stem cell technology, and medical diagnostics.
Plenary Speakers
梁錦榮教授 Prof. Kam W. Leong
Samuel Y. Sheng Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, USA
Editor-in-Chief, Biomaterials
Leong’s research focuses on the development of innovative biomaterials for two major therapeutic applications: drug delivery and regenerative medicine.
He uses polymeric biomaterials to deliver chemotherapeutics, DNA-based therapeutics, and cells for cancer therapy, gene therapy, immunotherapy, and cell therapy. He also uses tissue engineering principles and stem cell engineering to construct human tissue-on-a-chip for disease modeling and high-throughput drug screening.
In cancer therapy, Leong collaborates with Dr. Tadao Ohno to develop a tumor vaccine comprising cytokines and tumor tissue fragments from the patients. It has been used to treat over 350 brain cancer patients in Japan. In nonviral gene therapy, Leong demonstrates the feasibility of using DNA nanoparticles to deliver FVIII and FIX genes orally to treat hemophilia in animal models. He has also developed nanomanufacturing techniques to produce DNA nanoparticles, a critical barrier in the eventual translation of nanomedicine. In regenerative medicine, Leong pioneers the application of DNA nanoparticles to convert adult cells from one cell type to another, raising the possibility of treating intractable neurodegenerative disorders via nonviral cell reprogramming. He has also recently developed nanoparticle-mediated genome editing technologies to delete harmful genes and correct genetic disorders. The work will impact precision medicine and the development of human tissue-on-a-chip for new drug development.
Leong received a BS in chemical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Editor-in-Chief of Biomaterials.
Plenary Speakers
莊曜宇博士 Eric Y. Chuang, Ph. D.
Vice President & General Director, Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
Professor, Graduate Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, National Taiwan University, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
Dr Chuang obtained his PhD in cancer biology, specializing in toxicology and molecular genetics from Harvard University in 1997, focusing on radiation-induced mutagenesis in human cells for his doctoral thesis. He then joined the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an IRTA fellow, researching radiogenomics, and later became Head of the Microarray Laboratory for Radiation Oncology Sciences Program at NCI, where he advanced microarray technologies for studying radiation-induced molecular mechanisms and genomic effects.
In 2011, he returned to National Taiwan University (NTU), serving as Director of the Graduate Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics (BEBI) from 2012 to 2018, and held an EMBA from NTU. Currently, he’s a BEBI Professor and General Director of Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Hsinchu, Taiwan, being an expert in Genomic Technologies, Bioinformatics, Cancer, Oncology, Radiation Biology, Biomedical Engineering, and Precision Medicine. He has authored over 165 peer-reviewed publications, and also serves on the editorial board of Scientific Reports and is Editor-in-Chief of Translational Cancer Research.