Advancing Manufacture of Cell and Gene Therapies IX
Advancing Manufacture of Cell and Gene Therapies Award
Chris Ramsborg, Flagship Pioneering
The National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) and Engineering Conferences International are pleased to announce that Chris Ramsborg of Flagship Pioneering is the recipient of the 2026 Award for Advancing Manufacture of Cell and Gene Therapy. The award will be presented at the Advancing Manufacture of Cell and Gene Therapy IX conference, February 1-5, 2026 in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Few individuals have shaped the practical reality of cell therapy manufacturing and delivery as profoundly as Chris. From one of the first CD34+ cell separation devices (CliniMACS), to the 2nd FDA-approved autologous cell therapy (Provenge) to the transformative CAR-T medicines Breyanzi and Abecma, and now to the next generation of cell therapies and other advanced therapeutics, Chris has been a driving force behind many of the industry’s most important breakthroughs in advanced therapeutics in the last 30 years.
Elected in 2020 as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Dr. Ramsborg’s contributions are rooted in the applied sciences: a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford, a Fulbright scholarship in bioprocess engineering at the Technical University of Berlin, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern under Professor Terry Papoutsakis that uncovered fundamental insights into large scale T-cell expansion still used in today’s CAR-T platforms.
At Dendreon he led the CMC submission for Provenge and then engineered controls that enabled an autologous cell therapy to manufactured globally. As one of the earliest scientific leaders at Juno Therapeutics, he built the technical development and technology functions, shaped the global CMC strategy that delivered global approvals for Breyanzi and Abecma, and led the team that invented the NEX-T manufacturing platform, which is currently in clinical development in multiple auto-immune indications.
Across Juno Therapeutics, Celgene, and Bristol Myers Squibb, he built and led organizations of hundreds of scientists and engineers and filed 58 patent applications – 34 of which are now published – covering breakthroughs in the manufacturing of autologous and allogeneic cell therapies, process automation equipment, gene editing, lipid nanoparticles, and advanced analytics.
Today at Flagship Pioneering, Chris continues to scale advanced therapeutics companies from ideas to products, building company structures, embedding cultures of innovation and relentless execution to create important medicines.
Chris’ impact extends to the hundreds of people he has collaborated with, hired, mentored, and coached along the way. Many are at this meeting this week. Chris is always available for a quick phone call to give leadership advice or discuss different development strategies.
Through interdisciplinary collaboration, innovative engineering, and steadfast leadership, Chris Ramsborg has repeatedly turned “impossible” manufacturing challenges into routine, life-saving reality for tens of thousands of patients worldwide.
Throughout his career, he has continued to push the boundaries of what regenerative medicine can achieve. Please join us in congratulating Chris Ramsborg, the recipient of the 2026 Award for Advancing Manufacture of Cell and Gene Therapy.
Christopher Hewitt Outstanding Young Investigator Award
Priye Iworima, PBS Biotech, Inc.
ECI is pleased to announce that Priye Iworima is the winner of the Christopher Hewitt Outstanding Young Investigator Award.
Diepiriye (Priye) Georgina Iworima, PhD, is a biomedical and bioprocess scientist focused on translating regenerative medicine innovations into clinically relevant cell therapies. Her work brings together developmental biology, bioprocess engineering, and translational cell therapy manufacturing, with an emphasis on generating functional pancreatic endocrine cells for the treatment of Type 1 diabetes.
Priye completed a BSc (Hons) and MSc in Cell Biology at Simon Fraser University, where her research examined mitochondrial movement and function in rat primary cortical neurons and astrocytes. She later earned her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of British
Columbia under the mentorship of Drs. Timothy Kieffer and James Piret. Her doctoral research moved beyond differentiation protocol optimization, providing insights into metabolic switching, growth kinetics, hydrodynamic environments, and quality attributes that govern the scalable manufacture of human pluripotent stem cell-derived insulin-producing cells. Her work utilized adherent culture vessels, AggreWell™ systems, spinner cultures, and Vertical Wheel bioreactors to identify and characterize stage-specific process parameters and quality target product profiles in multistage directed differentiation workflows.
Priye is also an active scientific communicator and has presented internationally and authored peer-reviewed manuscripts. Her contributions have been recognized through several distinctions, including the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy Canadian Early Stage Professionals Abstract Award, features in The Scientist and UBC’s international campaign The Potential Is Yours, the SAS William F. Meggers Award, multiple conference poster awards, and national fellowships such as the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Doctoral Graduate Scholarship and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Gold Award.
Outside the lab, Priye is known for her commitment to empowering the next generation of scientists, particularly women, immigrants, and underrepresented communities navigating STEM careers. Her leadership reflects a blend of scientific rigor, translational focus, and a belief in the collaborative “village” required to bring curative therapies to patients, as exemplified during her tenure as Chair of the Stem Cell Network’s Trainee Communications Committee.
Priye currently works as a Bioprocess Research and Development Scientist at PBS Biotech Inc., where she serves as an internal and client-facing subject matter expert in pancreatic endocrine differentiation, process optimization, and IND-enabling strategies.