Deepa Shankar

Deepa B. Shankar, PhD is the Director for Research and Development of Immunoreagents and Immunoassays at the Life Sciences Group division of Thermo Fisher Scientific. She has been with ThermoFisher Scientific for the past five years, utilizing her expertise in molecular immunology to develop recombinant antibody platforms and Immunoassays. Dr. Shankar received her Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Southern California and pursued postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. She started her professional career as an assistant professor at the UCLA School of Medicine in 2004. She then took up a role in drug discovery at Jubilant Biosys, India in 2007 and went on to lead the Oncology Therapeutics group as Associate Director in 2008 before joining Life Technologies in 2010.

Dr. Shankar’s group at ThermoFisher Scientific has been instrumental in establishing the ABfinityTM technology and a novel SuperclonalTM to produce Recombinant, sequence verified and sensitive Affinity reagents . Currently, their emphasis is on enhancing the quality of available in-house antibodies through stringent validation programs plugged into various immunoassays.

Dr. Shankar has several publications in the field of Cancer Biology and Immunology. She has two clinical candidates currently on trial for pancreatic cancer and Leukemia. In addition to running a high performing innovative team, Dr. Shankar spends every moment she gets with her two children.