Mark Smales PhD

Professor Smales is currently Professor of Industrial Biotechnology at the University of Kent and the Director of the Industrial Biotechnology Centre at the University of Kent. He is also the Director of the BBSRC and EPSRC sponsored Network in Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy, BioProNET, a network in the field of bioprocessing and biologics that brings together academics, industrialists and other special interest groups to accelerate innovation and deliver change in this area. He currently holds a Royal Society Industrial Fellowship and is a member of the Royal Society Industry Fellows College. His research interests cover all of upstream bioprocessing development and host cell protein flux during bioprocessing including reverse cell engineering approaches, systems/synthetic biology, and the identification of target genes/proteins for manipulation (or markers for screening purposes) in order to enhance biotherapeutic protein quality and production from in vitro cultured mammalian cells. A major focus of his work is reducing heterogeneity of recombinant protein products from mammalian cells. He is an Executive Editor of Biotechnology Letters. He has given multiple keynote presentations at international conferences and published widely in the area.