Benjamin Fryer PhD

Ben Fryer is the team leader for Cell Manufacturing and Processing at the University of Washington’s Heart Regeneration Program. The HRP is led by Professor Chuck Murry and is currently in pre-clinical development of a cell therapy to treat heart disease. Ben earned a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Pennsylvania and completed a postdoc in Celeste Simon’s Howard Hughes Laboratory.

He has worked for several small biotech / pharmaceutical firms supporting discovery research and pre-clinical & clinical development of small and large molecule therapies for cancer. Prior to joining HRP Ben worked at Janssen R&D’s internal diabetes venture from 2006 to 2014 on a defined and scalable method to manufacture pancreatic beta islets from stem cells for the treatment and cure of diabetes.

Ben is an inventor on several pending patents for Janssen/Johnson&Johnson, including stirred tank bioreactor based suspension expansion and differentiation processes and a product currently marketed by Thermo-Fisher as Nunclon-Vita.