Diego Vargas

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT DIEGO VARGAS

Diego Vargas is the Vice President of Cell Therapy and Alliance Management at Link Cell Therapies. At Link, Diego leads the Cell Therapy Group, which includes Viral Vector Design, Molecular Biology, CAR T & Target Cell Line Engineering, Platform Enhancements and In vivo Pharmacology. Additionally, Diego is responsible for managing Link Cell\'s scientific Alliances with external partners.After his academic training Diego worked at Pfizer and Allogene, where he and his team developed Potency Enhancements for Allogeneic CAR T cell Therapies. After Allogene, Diego joined Serotiny, a Bay Area startup focusing on high-throughput library-based optimization of Cell and Gene Therapies. At Serotiny (now part of J&J), Diego led the Research Team which applied the company\'s high-throughput platform to developing novel Cell and Gene Therapies for J&J and Tessera Therapeutics partnerships. Diego obtained his B.S. in Biology from Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru. He then obtained his Ph.D. from The University of Texas Medical Branch, studying the immune response to the intracellular parasite Leishmania. Diego then pursued post-doctoral training in the Vaccine Branch of the National Cancer Institute where he developed novel HIV vaccines based on adenoviral vectors. He then became a Staff Scientist in the Laboratory of Viral Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases where he worked on developing CAR T cells to eradicate HIV infection.Diego has co-authored >40 scientific publications and is an co-inventor on multiple patent applications.