Luís Maranga was born in the small village of Vale de Maceiras, near Estremoz, Alto Alentejo on July 4th of 1973.

His main area of research is on cell culture process development of viral vectors, for vaccination and/or gene therapy, and therapeutic monoclonal antibodies for cancer treatment.

Since October of 2006, he is a Scientist III (Group Leader) at Cell Culture Development, Medimmune Vaccines, Inc., in Santa Clara, California, USA. He is currently leading the bioreactor process development of a cell culture based cold-adapted Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine (LAIV) against seasonal and avian flu pandemic (H5N1) strains.

Luís Maranga obtained his licenciatura in Chemical Engineering – branch of Biotechnology at Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST) in 1997. During his last undergraduate year, he performed research in Isabel Sá-Correia’s laboratory at IST, characterizing Burkholderia cepacia clinical isolates from the Cystic Fibrosis Center at Hospital de Santa Maria, via DNA typing using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and assessed the occurrence of nosocomial infections and the operational procedures intending to prevent those incidents.

During 1997-98, he was a staff chemical engineer in the analytical development of Laboratórios Vitória, S.A., where he developed new analytical methods for active pharmaceutical ingredients, APIs, and mathematical models quantifying the kinetics of degradation of APIs during controlled stability studies at high temperature.

In the summer of 1998, he joined Manuel J. T. Carrondo’s Animal Cell Technology Laboratory and IBET’s pilot plant unit at Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Oeiras, as a Ph.D. student in Chemical Engineering, supported by a fellowship from Fundação para Ciência e Tecnologia (Portuguese government). His Ph.D. research focused on the development of optimized production processes for virus-like particles (VLPs) using the insect cell-baculovirus expression vector system. VLPs are safer viral vaccines, comparatively with attenuated or inactivated viruses, since they lack genetic material from the viral pathogen, but are able to induce a better immune response than just subunit ones.

From 1998 to 2001 he was also a teaching assistant in the Chemical and Environmental Sciences program at ISEIT - Instituto Piaget, Almada, lecturing the 3rd year courses of Industrial and Biochemical Project Design I and II, and he records those years of teaching experience as a very enjoyable experience.

In 2001 he was invited for a graduate internship at Fermentation and Cell Culture, Bioprocess R&D at Merck & Co., Inc. in West Point, Pennsylvania, USA, where he stayed until October 2002, delaying his Ph.D. graduation until early 2003. At Merck, he conducted research on novel production processes for replication-deficient adenovirus vectors currently being tested as a promising HIV vaccine candidate in phase II clinical trials.

After graduating with his Ph.D. he spent six months, once again at Animal Cell Technology Laboratory and pilot plant unit at IBET/ITQB in Oeiras, working on the development of VLP candidate vaccines against rotavirus using the baculovirus expression vector system.

On June of 2003, he joined again the Fermentation and Cell Culture, Bioprocess R&D at Merck & Co., Inc. in West Point, Pennsylvania, USA, as a Senior Research Biochemical Engineer (Group Leader), where he worked for one year on developing enhanced production processes for replication-deficient adenovirus vectors, by optimizing the metabolic states of host cells used for virus propagation, via dynamic nutrient feeding. After that, he led a process development team responsible for downstream processing systems used in the manufacture of Merck’s Varicella and Zoster (PHN) vaccines, both recently approved in Portugal.
Later, he was responsible for a group of scientists/engineers developing high-titer production processes, at up to 2,000 L bioreactor scale, under cGMP, for a new therapeutic monoclonal antibody against prostate/pancreatic/bladder cancer, using CHO mammalian cells, to supply clinical grade bulk drug material for phase II/III clinical trials. This antibody is currently being evaluating in human clinical trials.

In the fall of 2006, following an award of US$170 MM by the US government to Medimmune Vaccines, Inc., he was hired by them to lead the conversion of their current egg based influenza vaccine (FluMist) into a cell culture derived product. As part of the project, is also the development of a large-scale bioreactor production processes for avian flu pandemic strains (H5N1). Currently his group has already developed a Phase I bioreactor process for cell culture based influenza that will be tested in human clinical trials early next year. He is currently leading the development of large-scale (1,600L) Phase II influenza vaccine production processes for seasonal and pandemic strains.

Despite the type of constraints of performing research at industrial level, due to necessary confidentiality/proprietary requirements, he is still actively publishing and presenting at major conferences, and has already published two first author papers from his research at Merck, with another two in draft stage. Also, his last presentation at the 226th American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting in 2005, was nominated for the Top 3 of Cell Culture presentations and selected for the BEST of ACS BIOT Web Symposia, held later in that year.

Since the beginning of his career Luís Maranga has published 12 papers in scientific journals with peer review, eight of them as first author, and has presented 14 oral or posters at major international conferences, with more than half of them as first author/presenter. During his Ph.D., his research work and fruitful collaborations resulted in him being an author of ten peer-reviewed papers (being the first author in six of them) published in top international Biochemical Engineering, Biochemistry and Vaccine journals.

His earlier move to a world-class pharmaceutical company such as Merck & Co., Inc, was driven by a combination of various considerations, and to pursue an opportunity to potentially contribute to human health on a global scale, by performing high-level research on the area of human vaccine and therapeutic antibody production.

He decided to take this new position at Medimmune Vaccines, Inc. for the opportunity to contribute to the worldwide flu pandemic preparedness efforts currently underway. Medimmune Vaccines, Inc. is contracted with the US government to establish a cell-based facility in the United States that can produce at least 150 million doses within six months of notification of an influenza pandemic. Although these are potentially challenging times it is also exciting to be involved on projects that could have such a worldwide impact on human health. “Hopefully we will never need to use the pandemic vaccine, but is good to know that we have made all the efforts to be prepared if the time comes”, he adds.

He believes he is still mostly known in the cell culture scientific community by his Ph.D. work on elucidating strategies aiming to deal with the complexity of producing VLP with the insect cell-baculovirus system. Until then, the only recombinant vaccines approved for used in humans was a Hepatitis B VLP. Also, a new viral vaccine composed of VLPs from several different strains of human papilloma virus (HPV) has just been approved to prevent cervical cancer in women.
His recent work focusing on optimization of mammalian cell metabolism has only been published very recently, so it still needs more time to be appreciated.

Luís Maranga says he dreams of the day when the pharmaceutical/biotechnology sector in Portugal is competitive enough to compete, at least, at European level. “I hope to actively contribute for that”, he says.

After living in the USA, he has already been contacted by a couple of Portuguese pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies inquiring about an eventual return to Portugal, but so far, neither offers nor real projects have ever materialized. “I am sure I will return to Portugal in the not so distant future, and as soon as a challenging and interesting opportunity presents itself. Maybe the approach will be to use all my industrial experience gained in the USA and initiate in Portugal a new biotechnology or biopharmaceutical project from the ground-up“, he says.


marangal at medimmune.com


Representative publications:

- Maranga L. and Goochee F.G. (2006) Metabolism of PER.C6™ cells cultivated under fed-batch conditions at low glucose and glutamine levels. Biotechnology and Bioengineering 94:139-50.

- Maranga L., Aunins J.G. and Zhou W. (2005) Characterization of changes in PER.C6™ cellular metabolism during growth and propagation of a replication-deficient adenovirus vector. Biotechnology and Bioengineering 90:645-655.

- Maranga L., Cunha A., Clemente J., Cruz P.E. and Carrondo M.J.T. (2004) Scale-up of virus-like particles production: effects of sparging, agitation and bioreactor scale on cell growth, infection kinetics and productivity. Journal of Biotechnology 107:55-64.

- Maranga L., Brazão T.F. and Carrondo M.J.T. (2003) Virus-like particles production at low multiplicities of infection with the baculovirus insect cells system. Biotechnology and Bioengineering 84:245-53.

- Maranga L., Mendonça R.Z., Bengala A., Peixoto C.C., Moraes R.H.P., Pereira C.A., and Carrondo M.J.T. (20003) Enhancement of Sf-9 cell growth and longevity through supplementation of culture medium with hemolymph. Biotechnology Progress 19:58-63.

- Maranga L., Coroadinha A.S. and Carrondo M.J.T. (2002) Insect cell culture medium supplementation with fetal bovine serum and bovine serum albumin: effects on baculovirus adsorption and infection kinetics. Biotechnology Progress 18: 851-861.

- Maranga L., Rueda P., Antonis A.F.G., Vela C., Langeveld J.P.M., Casal J.I. and Carrondo M.J.T. (2002) Large scale production and downstream processing of a recombinant porcine parvovirus vaccine. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 59: 45-50.

- Maranga L., Cruz P.E., Aunins J.G. and Carrondo M.J.T. (2002) Production of core and virus-like particles with baculovirus infected insect cells. Advances in Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology 74: 183-206.