Cherie is an established member and thought-leader of the cytometry community, where she’s driven impact for more than 25 years focusing on hematopathology, cell therapy, and biopharmaceutical biomarker laboratories. As a translational scientist, her professional focus lies in understanding cellular interactions in complex diseases and the development of novel therapies. She is passionate about development of innovative assays and computational analysis solutions to advance life changing therapeutic development.
During her tenure at Amgen, Genentech, and small cell therapy companies, she championed the design and use of biomarkers in clinical trial design for early and late stage drug development in infectious, autoimmune, and oncology diseases. She has served as the co-chair of Flow Cytometry Action Committee of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) and has co-authored over 50 publications and patents on topics specific to cytometry such as instrument and assay validation, sample stability, and receptor occupancy, and biomarkers. In her current role as VP of Translational Science at Ozette, she leads scientific strategy and partnerships, and oversees an innovative high dimensional single cell immunology lab and the implementation of novel computational/ML analysis platform to support clinical research.
As an ISAC council member, her focus will be:
1) outreach and education to develop current and future scientists to join the cytometry field.
2) advancing new technologies to support translational science.
3) to strengthen alliances between ISAC and biopharmaceutical scientists.
Passions and Highlights
Mentoring, Diversity and Education: Supporting the development of students and scientists in cytometry is key for the continued growth and revitalization of the field of single cell technologies. During her tenure at Genentech, as part of the Development Sciences Rotational program, a two-year internship for young scientists in underrepresented populations, Cherie’s lab supported recently graduated, minority students by providing an opportunity to learn about drug development and build foundational skill sets in single cell analysis and bioinformatics. Her contributions to education extend to many synergistic societies beyond ISAC, including ICCS and AAPS.
New Technologies and Analytical Tools: New advancements in technology such as spectral cytometry and AI/ML algorithm-based analysis approaches herald a new direction. Collaboration between biological and bioinformatic scientists is essential to deliver on the promise these new technologies hold to reduce bias and subjectivity, and allow for deeper and more robust investigation of cellular interactions.
Cherie is committed to the development and adoption of innovative technology to keep the field of cytometry at the cutting edge of single cell analysis.
Through collaboration with leaders in the AI/ML cytometry space, she has led multiple CYTO workshops and initiated a framework for advancing the robust use of AI/ML analysis for clinical trials (Ng, et al. Cytometry Part B: Clinical Cytometry 2024).
Society Involvement: Cherie’s membership and involvement with ISAC started in 1996. Since this time, she has consistently contributed to ISAC society through programming at annual congresses and the associated CYTO University and journals (Cytometry part A, Clinical Cytometry part B). Her contributions include publications and guest editor for special issues in Cytometry Part B, and over 30 plenary, tutorials, workshops, and parallel sessions at CYTO congresses.