Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Bhupal Ban, PhD

Senior Staff Scientist, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Bhupal Ban, Ph.D., joined the IBRI in March 2019 as Senior Staff Scientist in the IBRI’s Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center (PBC). In this role, he will be responsible for defining and executing molecular engineering strategies designed to optimize the biological activity and pharmaceutical properties of lead monoclonal antibody candidates.

Prior to the IBRI, and since 2015, Dr. Ban served as an Assistant Professor of Research and Director of the Antibody and Engineering Technology Core in the Department of Cell Biology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va. While at UVA, he was recognized as having the outstanding research core of the year for 2016. Prior to UVA and since 2013, he served as Research Associate in the College of Pharmacy at Xavier University in New Orleans, La. From 2011 to 2013, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Tulane University’s School of Medicine, also in New Orleans.

Dr. Ban’s corporate experience includes working in the Bioscience Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., and serving as Senior Research Scientist and Project Leader for MedyTox Inc. in South Korea where he was recognized as outstanding researcher of the year in 2008.

A native of Nepal, Dr. Ban earned his B.S. in Biological Sciences from Tri-bhuvan University in Nepal, and his M.S. in Organic Chemistry, also from Tri-bhuvan University. He earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Sun Moon University in South Korea, where he also served as a Doctoral Researcher.  He has published more than two dozen papers and presentation abstracts and holds three patents.

Partha Banerjee, PhD

Staff Scientist, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Partha Banerjee, Ph.D., joined the IBRI September 2018 as Staff Scientist in the Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center (PBC).  In this role, he is responsible for the general research and development of new and existing protein therapeutics.

Prior to the IBRI and since 2011, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow and then a Research Associate in Biological Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md. From 2006 to 2011, he was a Ph.D. Candidate in the Chemical Biology Group State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, N.Y. He received the Chemistry Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research from SUNY in 2011. From 2005 to 2006, he served as a Research Assistant in Microbiology at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi, Indiana.

Dr. Banerjee earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Biology from SUNY at Stony Brook, N.Y., and his M.S. in Chemistry from University of Delhi in New Delhi, India. He earned his B.S. in  Chemistry from St. Stephens College, also in New Delhi. He holds one patent and has been responsible for the publication of nearly a dozen articles related to microbiological research and human metabolic diseases.

Whitney Bullock

Postdoctoral Fellow, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Whitney Bullock joined the IBRI in December 2019. She spends half of her time as a postdoctoral fellow with the Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine and the other half here at the IBRI researching mechanotransduction in bone and developing antibodies targeting the Wnt signaling pathway in bone mechanotransduction.

Prior to joining the IBRI, Whitney worked on her PhD at IU, where she explored the role of mechanical signaling in regulating bone biology. While completing her PhD she generated new mouse models using both ES cell line and Crispr/Cas9 gene editing technologies, and phenotyped these novel genetic mutations using radiographic, histological, biochemical and other analyses.

She also mentored undergraduate students and served as a teaching assistant for the Biomedical Engineering Biomechanics laboratory course in Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University.

Whitney obtained her bachelor’s degree in Animal Sciences from Purdue University in 2010. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Cell Biology and Anatomy from Indiana University in 2019.

Doreen Eastes

Research Associate, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center (PBC)

Doreen Eastes is a research associate in the IBRI’s Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center (PBC), which she joined in June 2019. In this role, she is responsible for establishing hybridoma production capabilities and development of new and existing protein therapeutics.

She joined the IBRI in 2016 as a research analyst in the IBRI’s then Single Cell Analytics Center, which was phased out in the spring of 2019 to pursue external commercialization of its diagnostic platform. Prior to the IBRI, and since 2015, she was a research technician in the Wells Center for Pediatric Research at Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine in Indianapolis. Before that and since 1998, she served as an assistant diabetes research scientist at Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, and then as a research associate at PreClinOmics, also in Indianapolis. Her broad scientific experience also included research at Scherling-Plough Animal Health in Mundelein, Ill., Interdisciplinary Center for Cell Products and Technologies (ICCPT) in Terre Haute, Ind., and at Pitman-Moore Inc., also in Terre Haute.

Doreen earned her B.S. in microbiology from Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington, Ind., and her M.A. in microbiology, also from IU-Bloomington.

Steven Haney, PhD

Research Director, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Steven Haney, Ph.D., joined the IBRI in July 2018 as Research Fellow in the IBRI’s Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center. In his role as Research Director, he is responsible for establishing the protein expression and production cores, as well as developing biological support for emerging therapeutics.

Prior to the IBRI, and since 2012, Dr. Haney served as a Senior Research Advisor and Group Leader, and Senior Research Advisor at Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN. His research focus at Lilly was on quantitative biology discovery chemistry and research technologies, and oncology translational research. Prior to Lilly, he was a consultant to the Yale Medical Center for Molecular Discovery, New Haven, CT. He also held various senior, principal and management scientific research positions at Pfizer Research and Wyeth Research, both Cambridge, MA, and at Cadus Pharmaceutical Corporation, Tarrytown, NY.

Dr. Haney earned a B.S. in Biochemistry from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY, and a Ph.D., in Biological Chemistry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI and was a Research Fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. He co-holds the patent for methods of modulating apoptosis using inhibitors of brain-localized protein kinases. He has authored or co-authored more than 25 publications, and has authored more than 30 commentaries, reviews and book chapters, and is the editor of two books on High Content Screening. He is currently President of the Society for Biomolecular Imaging and Informatics.

June Javens-Wolfe, PhD

Research Associate, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

June Javens-Wolfe, Ph.D., joined the IBR as a Research Analyst in December 2018 in the Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center (PBC). In her current role as Research Associate, she is responsible for the general research and development of new and existing protein therapeutics.

Prior to the IBRI and since 2015, she worked for two contractors for Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis – Advanced Testing Laboratory as a Biology Project Coordinator, and with Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories as a Biochemist in BioProduct Development. From 2004 to 2013, she served as a visiting research associate and graduate research assistant at Indiana University-Bloomington, Ind., and from 2013 to 2014, she held adjunct faculty positions at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., and at IU-Bloomington.

She has been responsible for several significant research accomplishments, including being the lead author of a research article on the cellular localization of microbial polysaccharide export proteins published in Molecular Microbiology. Dr. Javens-Wolfe earned her Ph.D. in molecular, cellular and developmental biology from IU-Bloomington, and a B.A. in biology from DePauw University.

Nathan LeRoy

Assistant Research Associate, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Nathan LeRoy is an assistant research associate in the IBRI’s Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center (PBC), effective May 2019. In this role, he is responsible for the general research and development of new and existing protein therapeutics.

Before joining the IBRI and since 2016, he was a research assistant with Tantama Research Group in West Lafayette, Ind., where he was involved in the research of foundational molecular biology and fluorescent protein purification/characterization methods. In the summer of 2018, he served as a computational biologist intern at Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis.

Nathan earned his B.S. in biological engineering from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

Mustapha Moussaif, PhD

Senior Staff Scientist, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Mustapha Moussaif, Ph.D., joined the IBRI in January 2019 as Senior Staff Scientist in the Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center (PBC).  In this role, he is responsible for establishing operational platforms for biotherapeutic antibody discovery, lead optimization and developability.

Prior to the IBRI, he worked as Scientist in the Bio-Therapeutics/Lead Engineering group with Boehringer-Ingelheim in Ridgefield, CT. Prior to that, he was a Senior Scientist in Biotherapeutics Discovery at the Icahn Medical School in Mount Sanai, NY. and worked as a Research Scientist at New York University in New York City. From 2004 to 2010, he was a Research Associated with the department of molecular pharmacology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

Dr. Moussaif also served as Postdoctoral Research Associate in Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, and as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology and Biological Sciences from the University of Liège, Liège, Belgium, and his B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University Abdel Malek Essaadi in Morocco. He has published and contributed to the publication of more than 15 research articles.

Megan Sopko

Senior Research Associate, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Megan Sopko joined the IBRI in April 2019 as Senior Research Associate in the Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center (PBC).  In this role, she is responsible for the general research and development of new and existing protein therapeutics.

Prior to the IBRI and since 2010, she served as a Technologist/Technician and then as a Technologist for Corteva Agriscience, the Agriculture Division of DowDuPont (formerly Dow Agrisciences) in Indianapolis. She was involved in diverse lab operations and research, and in the training of other technicians. From  2004 to 2010, she was a Lab Technician and Scientist with Kelly Scientific Resources in Indianapolis. She was involved in gene expression and other genetic research.

Megan earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. She has been responsible for three scientific publications covering genetic and protein research.

Victor Wroblewski, PhD

Research Director, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Victor J. Wroblewski, Ph.D., joined the IBRI in July 2018 as Research Fellow in the IBRI’s Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center. In his current role as Research Director, he is responsible for preclinical evaluation and optimization of antibody leads and lead development. 

Prior to the IBRI, Dr. Wroblewski held positions with increasing responsibility during a 25-year span at Eli Lilly and Company’s Lilly Research Laboratories in Indianapolis, IN. His responsibilities at Lilly Research Labs included the direction of a team of 30 scientists charged with supporting the preclinical development of Lilly’s biotechnology portfolio (monoclonal antibodies, multi-functional antibodies, fusion proteins and peptides). Prior to Lilly, he worked at Bayer Corporation in Berkeley, CA, as a Staff Scientist and Senior Staff Scientist, and before that, he served as a Post-Doctoral Scientist at the University of California at Davis.

Dr. Wroblewski earned a B.S. in Biology from State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY, and his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY. He holds the patent for Protease Resistant FLINT Analogs. He has authored, co-authored or contributed to more than 25 publications and book chapters.

Yingjian You

Senior Research Associate, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center

Yingjian “Jim” You is a senior research associate in the IBRI’s Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Center (PBC). He joined the IBRI in 2019 to be responsible for the general research and development of new and existing protein therapeutics.

Yingjian brings an exceptionally strong history in biotherapeutic development to the IBRI. Prior to the IBRI and since 2017, he was a research analyst in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. Before that and since 2012, he worked as a research associate in protein expression science for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, N.Y. From 1999 to 2006, he was a senior research technician in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) in St. Louis. From 2006 to 2012, he became staff scientist at WUSM. From 1998 to 1999, he was a research technician at the Institute for Microbiology and Hygiene at Saarland University Hospital in Homburg, Saarland, Germany. From 1985 to 1998, he was a senior medical laboratory technologist in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Tongji Medical University in Wuhan, China.

He studied medical laboratory technology at the Health School of Tongji Medical University in Wuhan, China. He has authored or coauthored more than two dozen journal articles and a dozen abstracts.