Dr. Madhusudan V. Peshwa is currently a Chief Technology Officer, Cell Therapy at Tessera Therapeutics, Cambridge, MA, USA. He is responsible for developing the strategy and executing the operating plan encompassing the design, development and manufacture of Tessera's proprietary mobile gene element engineered cell therapy product portfolio.
Dr. Peshwa did his B.Tech in Chemical Engineering in 1988 from IIT Kanpur. Subsequently, he went on to complete his PhD in Chemical Engineering in 1993 from the University of Minnesota. He has served in various roles at Dendreon Corporation from 1994 - 2004 including Scientist, Cell Processing & Expansion, Project Leader, Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte Program, Manager, Cell Process Engineering & Pilot Plant Operations, Director, Cell Processing, Vice President, Process Sciences & Manufacturing. As the Vice President of Process Sciences and Manufacturing, at Dendreon Corporation, Dr. Peshwa was responsible for leading the CMC and GMP manufacturing for Provenge® (Sipuleucel-T), an autologous cellular immunotherapy product for treatment of prostate cancer, the first ever active cellular immunotherapy product approved by the US FDA. He later served as a Limited Partner & Executive Vice President at NewNeural LLC for an year. In 2005, he joined MaxCyte, Inc. , taking the roles of Vice President, Research & Development, Executive Vice President, Cellular Therapies, Chief Scientific Officer and went on to work there till 2018.
As Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at MaxCyte, Inc., Dr. Peshwa was responsible for leading the development and commercialization of ex vivo cell loading platform technology. Additionally, he also established MaxCyte's proprietary therapeutic product portfolio with lead program being a non-viral mRNA engineered CAR Immunotherapy (CARMA) with one-day manufacturing process under company sponsored IND for treatment of solid cancers; and additional collaborative programs under CRADA Agreement with Investigators at NIAID and NHLBI, for ex vivo gene correction in autologous hematopoietic stem cells, as cell therapy for potential treatment of monogenic diseases.He was the Chief Technology Officer, Global Cell Therapy at GE Healthcare (GEHC) from 2018 to 2020.His responsibilities at GEHC included GEHC's CGT product and service portfolio to enable and accelerate the development of robust, scalable, industrialized manufacturing and delivery of cell and gene therapies. He also served as a Chief Technology Officer at Mana Therapeutics from 2020 to 2021, an immunotherapy company focused on the development of allogeneic, multi-tumor-antigen-targeted,
non-engineered, T-cell immunotherapies with additional oversight of Quality Assurance and Quality Control functions.
Besides his vast industry experience, Dr. Peshwa has been the principal/co-investigator on multiple research studies. He has been issued six US patents for cell therapies. He has served as an advisor to industries, government and financial organisations. In 2020, he was inducted into the College for Fellows at the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), in recognition of contributions in Regenerative Medicine to advancements in the field of cell and gene therapies.
