Stefan Wildt PhD

Stefan Wildt, Ph.D. is the Chief Technology Officer of Global Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Cell Therapy Translational Engine at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, Ltd. and a member of the global research and development leadership team.

In his role, he is responsible for the development and execution of an end-to-end vision and strategy for Pharmaceutical Sciences ensuring the necessary capabilities for an innovative, highly partnered, and modality-diverse pipeline. Pharmaceutical Sciences supports CMC activities through all development stages and is also responsible for Takeda’s device development.

In his role, Stefan is also responsible with his team for the seamless transfer of technology and know-how to the Global Manufacturing and Sciences and Global Quality organizations.

Stefan also leads Takeda’s Translational Cell Therapy Engine, an interdisciplinary group of scientists, advancing a diverse pipeline of cell therapy assets, some of which are developed in partnership with leaders in the field such as Gamma Delta Therapeutics (UK), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (USA), Noble Immune Biotech (JP) and the Center for iPSC Cell Research and Application (CiRA) (JP). Takeda‘s cell therapy effort focuses on several platforms plays, reaching from next-generation chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells, via gamma-delta T-cells, to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and Natural Killer (NK) cells. Several of Takeda‘s cell therapy assets are at the clinical stage.

Prior to joining Takeda, Stefan worked at Novartis Pharma AG, where he was Vice President, Global Head of Technical Research and Development Cell- and Gene-Therapies (TRD-CGT). While at Novartis he and his teams were responsible for building the technical team, capabilities, internal and external footprint as well as the strategy that supported a variety of cell and gene therapy programs and delivered the cell process for the first-ever approved and commercialized chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy.

Before joining Novartis, he served as Head of Biologics and Bioprocess Research and Development, at Merck & Co and Senior Director of Merck BioVentures (MBV), where he was a member of the core team developing Merck’s entry into the follow-on biologics space.

Earlier in his career, Stefan joined a biotech start-up, GlycoFi, Inc., at its inception. With his team, he was instrumental in developing and executing a research and development strategy, which ultimately led to the development of a platform of glycoengineered yeast strains to serve as a discovery tool and manufacturing host for therapeutic glycoproteins. This work led to collaborations with top-tier biopharmaceutical companies and the acquisition of GlycoFi by Merck & Co.

Stefan received an M.S. (Dipl. Ing) degree in biotechnology / biochemical engineering from the University of Technology (TU) Berlin, Germany, and completed his Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology under Professor Charles Thompson (The Center of Molecular Life Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland) and Dr. Ulrich Deuschle (Hoffmann La Roche AG, Basel). Before joining GlycoFi Stefan was a post-doctoral associate in chemical engineering in Prof. Greg Stephanopoulos’ lab at the Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (USA).