Summary
Research group leader with expertise in streamlining
operations through database development and customized applications.
- Devised and implemented novel antibody humanization strategies for clinical development,
leading to the successful advancement of multiple antibody candidates.
- Spearheaded the development, engineering, production, and characterization of antibodies
and immunoassays for commercial, diagnostic, and clinical applications.
- Restructured, streamlined, and optimized manufacturing processes for immunoassays by
applying LEAN principles, resulting in significant cost savings and efficiency gains.
- Developed databases and software applications to streamline
various research programs.
Industry Positions
Independent Consultant ⌂
Remote Contract Work 2022 - present
- Provided expert consultation for antibody development.
- Evaluated novel therapeutic technologies.
- Performed statistical analyses of experimental data.
- Wrote Python, and HTML/JS/CSS scripts for data scraping and parsing.
- Programmed Excel and GoogleSheets for various customized applications.
Senior Technical Manager Antibody Research Roche Tissue Diagnostics ⌂
Pleasanton CA 2012 - 2021
- Designed immunogens for approximately 235 successful new rabbit monoclonal antibodies for cancer tissue diagnostics (Refs pt1 2 4 5 6 8 10 11)
- Designed and implemented relational databases to track and analyze antibody development, and antibody sequences
- Led an antibody research team in the design, construction, expression, purification, and characterization of several engineered proteins and antibodies including
- Primary and secondary detection antibodies with site-specific conjugation tags
- Re-engineered antibodies with improved expression and stability properties (Refs pt10)
Research Engineer Department Chemical Engineering MIT ⌂
Cambridge MA 2012 - 2012
- Laboratory of J Christopher Love: development of HIV neutralizing antibodies
Director Antibody Development Integral Molecular ⌂
Philadelphia PA 2010 - 2011
- Developed a method to maximally humanize therapeutic antibodies (Ref 1)
- Designed and constructed human antibody mammalian expression vectors
- and recombinantly expressed two anti-viral antibodies
- Wrote PERL bioinformatics programs to support Shotgun Mutagenesis
Director Immunochemistry Enzo Life Sciences International ⌂
Plymouth Meeting PA 2009 - 2010
- Led an immunoassay R&D team in the design, development, assembly, characterization, documentation and transfer of 24 immunoassays to Manufacturing
- Performed three due diligence studies including feasibility and patent evaluations
Director R&D Bachem Immunology ⌂
San Carlos CA 2005 - 2009
- Developed and implemented the QC/QA system for the immunology product line
- Instituted CE marking certification for product distribution in Europe
- Automated and streamlined manufacturing of radioimmunoassays
- Implemented barcode-based procedures for order processing, kit assembly and shipping
- Led the R&D team in the development of new products at a rate of five releases per month
Director Antibody Therapeutics Epitomics ⌂
Burlingame CA 2003 - 2005
- Developed recombinant cloning methods for rabbit monoclonal antibodies (Refs pt3 pt9)
- Humanized rabbit antibodies for therapeutic applications (Refs 9, pt7)
Senior Research Fellow Essential Therapeutics Inc ⌂
Mountain View CA 2001 - 2002
- Developed biochemical assays for high-throughput screening of anti-bacterial drugs
- Identified lead compounds for three S. aureus proteins
- Supervised two research associates
Principal Scientist Surrogate Genetics Iconix Pharmaceuticals ⌂
Mountain View CA 1997 - 2001
- Developed a novel platform of cell-based assays for drug discovery (Refs 3, 4, pt13)
- Supervised two research associates
Director of Molecular Biology Cancer Research Institute of Contra Costa ⌂
Walnut Creek CA 1991 - 1997
- Discovery, cloning, expression and characterization of novel targets for breast cancer therapy (Refs 6, 8, 10, 13)
- Cloning expression and characterization of tumor-specific antibodies (Refs 9, 17, 18)
- Engineering of humanized tumor-specific antibodies and characterization in tumor-grafted animal models (Refs 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, pt12 )
- Engineering of novel antibody fragments and in-vivo biodistribution studies (Refs 5, 7)
Senior Scientist Pioneering Research Clorox Technical Center ⌂
Pleasanton CA 1988 - 1991
- Cloned, expressed and studied bacterial proteases for detergent formulations (Refs pt14)
- Supervised three research associates
Education and Post-Doctoral Training
1985 - 1988 Postdoctoral Fellow
University of California San Francisco Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics ⌂
San Francisco CA
- Laboratory of Dr. Christine Guthrie
- Genetics and molecular biology of pre-mRNA splicing (Refs 19, 20)
1985 PhD Biochemistry Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Biology ⌂
Cambridge Ma
- Laboratory of Dr. Phil Robbins
- Genetics, molecular biology and biochemistry of protein glycosylation (Refs 21, 22)
1979 BS Biochemistry Iowa State University Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics ⌂
Ames IA
- Minor in mathematical sciences
- Honors Program GPA 3.7
- Laboratory of Dr. John Robyt
- Organic synthesis of sucrose analogs
Awarded Grants ⌂
University of California Breast Cancer Prevention Program 1RB-0435
Molecular Design for Preventing Metastatic Progression from the 7/1/96 - 6/30/99
National Institutes of Health GM10188
A Genetic Study of snRNA Function in Yeast 12/1/84 - 11/30/87
Referenced Publications ⌂
- 1 Berdougo E, Couto JR, Doranz BJ Maximal Humanization of Monoclonal Abs, GEN Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News Vol. 31, No. 14 August 1, 2011
- 2 Yu Y, Lee P, Ke Y, Zhang Y, Yu Q, Lee J, Li M, Song J, Chen J, Dai J, Do Couto FJ, An Z, Zhu W, Yu GL. A humanized anti-VEGF rabbit monoclonal antibody inhibits angiogenesis and blocks tumor growth in xenograft models. PLoS One. Feb 5;5(2):e9072, 2010.
- 3 Tugendreich S, Perkins E, Couto J, Barthmaier P, Sun D, Tang S, Tulac S, Nguyen A, Yeh E, Mays A, Wallace E, Lila T, Shivak D, Prichard M, Andrejka L, Kim R, Melese T. A Streamlined Process to Phenotypically Profile Heterologous cDNAs in Parallel Using Yeast Cell-Based Assays. Genome Res. Nov;11(11):1899-912, 2001.
- 4 Perkins E, Sun D, Nguyen A, Tulac S, Francesco M, Tavana H, Nguyen H, Tugendreich S, Barthmaier P, Couto J, Yeh E, Thode S, Jarnagin K, Jain A, Morgans D, Melese T. Novel inhibitors of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase/PARP1 and PARP2 identified using a cell-based screen in yeast. Cancer Res. May 15;61(10):4175-83, 2001.
- 5 Speck, R.R., Blank, E. W., and Couto, J. R.: Biodistribution of Anti-Breast Mucin HuBrE3-Derived Inverted Fabs (IFabs) in Nude Mice Carrying MX-1 Xenographs. Hybridoma 16/243-248, 1997.
- 6 Taylor, M. R., Couto, J. R., Scallan, C .D., Ceriani, R. L., and Peterson: Lactadherin, a membrane-associated glycoprotein expressed in human milk and breast carcinomas promotes Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD)-dependent cell adhesion. DNA and Cell Biology 16/861-869, 1997.
- 7 Speck, R. R., Couto, J. R., Godwin, S. G., Christian, R. B., Kiwan, R., Ceriani, R. L., and Peterson, J. A. Inverted Fab2s (IFab2s): Engineering and Expression of Novel, Bivalent, 100 Kilodalton Targeting Molecules. Molecular Immunology 33: 1095-1102, 1996.
- 8 Couto, J. R., Taylor, M. R., Godwin, S. G., Ceriani, R. L., and Peterson, J. A. Cloning and sequence analysis of human breast epithelial antigen BA46 reveals an RGD cell adhesion sequence presented on an EGF-like domain., DNA and Cell Biology 15: 281-286, 1996.
- 9 Christian, R. B., Couto, J. R., Peterson, J. A., and Ceriani, R. L. Cloning and expression of cDNAs encoding the variable domains of the anti-breast carcinoma antibody Mc5, Hybridoma 15/155-8, 1996.
- 10 Taylor, M. R., Peterson, J. A., Ceriani, R. L., and Couto, J. R. Cloning and sequence analysis of human butyrophilin reveals a potential receptor function, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 1306: 1-4, 1996.
- 11 Couto, J. R., Christian, R. B., Peterson, J. A., and Ceriani, R. L. Designing human consensus antibodies with minimal positional templates, Cancer Res. 55: 5973s-5977s, 1995.
- 12 Ceriani, R. L., Blank, E. W., Couto, J. R., and Peterson, J. A. Biological activity of two humanized antibodies against two different breast cancer antigens and comparison to their original murine forms, Cancer Res. 55: 5852s-5856s, 1995.
- 13 Peterson, J. A., Couto, J. R., Taylor, M. R., and Ceriani, R. L. Selection of tumor-specific epitopes on target antigens for radioimmunotherapy of breast cancer, Cancer Res. 55: 5847s-5851s, 1995.
- 14 Couto, J. R., Blank, E. W., Peterson, J. A., and Ceriani, R. L. Anti-BA46 monoclonal antibody Mc3: humanization using a novel positional consensus and in vivo and in vitro characterization, Cancer Res. 55: 1717-22, 1995.
- 15 Couto, J. R., Blank, E. W., Peterson, J. A., Kiwan, R., Padlan, E. A., and Ceriani, R. L. Engineering of antibodies for breast cancer therapy: construction of chimeric and humanized versions of the murine monoclonal antibody BrE-3, Adv Exp Med Biol. 353: 55-9, 1994.
- 16 Couto, J. R., Padlan, E. A., Blank, E. W., Peterson, J. A., and Ceriani, R. L. Humanization of KC4G3, an anti-human carcinoma antibody, Hybridoma 13: 215-9, 1994.
- 17 Couto, J. R., Blank, E. W., Peterson, J. A., and Ceriani, R. L. Cloning of cDNAs encoding the variable domains of antibody KC4G3 and construction of a chimeric antibody, Hybridoma 12: 485-9, 1993.
- 18 Couto, J. R., Blank, E. W., Peterson, J. A., and Ceriani, R. L. Cloning of cDNAs encoding the variable domains of antibody BrE-3 and construction of a chimeric antibody, Hybridoma 12: 15-23, 1993.
- 19 Burgess, S., Couto, J. R., and Guthrie, C. A putative ATP binding protein influences the fidelity of branchpoint recognition in yeast splicing, Cell 60: 705-17, 1990.
- 20 Couto, J. R., Tamm, J., Parker, R., and Guthrie, C. A trans-acting suppressor restores splicing of a yeast intron with a branch point mutation, Genes & Dev. 1: 445-55, 1987.
- 21 Couto, J. R., Huffaker, T. C., and Robbins, P. W. Cloning and expression in Escherichia coli of a yeast mannosyltransferase from the asparagine-linked glycosylation pathway, J Biol Chem. 259: 378-82, 1984.
- 22 Snider, M. D., Huffaker, T. C., Couto, J. R., and Robbins, P. W. Genetic and biochemical studies of asparagine-linked oligosaccharide assembly, Philos Trans R Soc Lond [Biol]. 300: 207-23, 1982.
Referenced Patents ⌂