Dr. David Roush is currently CEO/Distinguished Scientist at Roush BioPharma Panacea, LLC (RBP). RBP is an enterprise dedicated to the successful development and optimization of biological products via strategic guidance derived from and leveraging a combination of strong scientific and engineering fundamentals and a plethora of experience. The organization provides scientific and technical guidance/consulting on all aspects of process development (ex. Developability, Control Strategy, Adventitious Agent Control, Modeling), technology development and commercialization enabled via a collaborative business model.
He is actively engaged in the biotechnology community currently serving as a member of the PREP Scientific Advisory Cmte, Organizing Cmte for Recovery of Biological Products Modeling Workshops, Adjunct Professor at University of Delaware Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and an ACS Councilor on the Meetings and Expositions Cmte, representing the BIOT Division. Dr. Roush previously served as session chair at PREP and ACS National Meetings (BIOT Division) and on the Northwestern University Master of Biotechnology Program Industrial Advisory Board for a decade, providing feedback on curriculum and mentoring graduate students.
Dr. Roush has more than 30 years of experience in bioprocess development (proteins, natural products and vaccines) directly contributing to the development of five life-saving therapeutics including the natural product/semi-synthetic anti-fungal drug CandidasTM and the immuno-oncology antibody KeytrudaTM while a Distinguished Scientist at Merck BioProcess R&D. Specific examples include the development of both non-chromatographic and chromatographic purification processes for isolation and purification of an intermediate of CandidasTM which included an in situ solvent recovery step. Dr. Roush’s contributions to the development and commercialization of KeytrudaTM were honored with the ACS BIOT Industrial Biotechnology Award (2016) and ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award (2021). He was selected as an ACS Fellow in 2019 for his combined contributions to the advancement of the Chemical Sciences and associated impact to society as well as ACS.
His experience spans process development for natural products, peptides, proteins, antibody drug conjugates from microbial, mammalian and fungal host spanning end-to end development from Discovery through Clinical Development and Commercialization including scale-up/scale-down and technology transfer. Dr. Roush was one of the pioneers in the development and use of computational biophysics models to support rational development of downstream processes and formulation development, which includes the application of Computational Developability.
Dr. Roush has been actively engaged in advancement of scientific knowledge and the development of new technologies via collaborations with leading academic researchers and consortia (ex. NIIMBL, WuXi, Penn State, RPI, NC State) authoring more than 120 publications and presentations on the topics of primary recovery, adventitious agent control strategy and associated mechanisms, modeling and new technologies for hcp/lipase control. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Rice University and his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston, under the guidance of Dr. Richard Willson. Dr. Roush’s doctoral research “Thermodynamic and Electrostatic Phenomena in the Ion Exchange of Proteins” was the synthesis of experimental and computational electrostatics and thermodynamics to explore protein-surface interactions, including the effects of charge variants and waters of hydration on chromatographic retention.