Professor of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge

Professor Slater is Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and former Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and the Region. He leads the University's Bioscience Engineering Group (BSEG), which collaborates widely with academia and industry in the UK, Europe and US to develop novel strategies for the manufacture, formulation and delivery of biopharmaceuticals. Their emphasis is on highly potent biological medicines and in recent years the group has worked on the primary and secondary processing of mammalian cell culture products, the processing of serum proteins, viral vaccines and DNA gene therapy vectors.

Professor Slater’s research has demonstrated that a range of affinity "handles" can be introduced into the lipid envelope of retroviruses and used for efficient purification or drug delivery. He is also investigating cost-effective production methods for antibodies by developing disposable, massively-parallel capillary chromatography technologies that exploit a patented extruded polymer film for large-scale antibody manufacture.

In addition, his team is developing drug targeting methods and a range of biopolymers that facilitate the site specific delivery of biopharmaceutical. These techniques have been used for the intracellular delivery of DNA, RNAi, protein and viral therapeutics; the invention of these technologies has lead to the birth of the spin-out company, Vivamer Ltd.