ESACT Innovation Award
Recognize outstanding innovators and contributors to the field of Animal Cell Culture Technology
ESACT Innovation Award 2026
The ESACT Innovation Award is to recognize outstanding innovators and contributors in the field of Animal Cell Culture Technology. ESACT has had a profound impact on the development of ACCT-based production of biologicals as human therapeutics as well as diagnostics. Over the years, several landmark contributions have been made by scientists and organizations associated with ESACT, yet there has not been a mechanism to recognize such contributions and disseminate their impact. This award aims to fill this need.
For the purpose of this award and to provide clarity, ESACT defines “Animal Cell Culture Technology” as:
Applied science, technologies, systems and processes that enable, facilitate or improve the use of cultured animal cells in research, diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
The award is presented at the discretion of the ESACT Award Committee during the ESACT bi-annual scientific meeting. The value of the award will be a sum of 5.000,00 EUR together with a commemorative plaque. The award will be presented to the recipient at the ESACT bi-annual scientific meeting, followed by the ESACT Innovation Award Lecture by the recipient. The invitation to attend the ESACT MEETING will further include all travel expenses, accommodation during the meeting and a waiver of registration fees.
The 2026 ESACT Innovation Award is given to Dr. Mario Assenmacher of Miltenyi Biotec, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany for:
Pioneering immune-cell technologies enabling scalable, clinically transformative cell and gene therapies.
Dr. Mario Assenmacher is recognized for transformative innovations in immune-cell technologies that bridge fundamental biology with clinical translation. He pioneered cytokine-based cell capture assays, enabling functional isolation of antigen-specific T cells, and advanced T-cell activation platforms, including the use of the TransAct reagent. He played a central role in developing the CliniMACS Prodigy system, establishing automated, closed, GMP-compliant manufacturing for cell therapies. His work has shaped scalable CAR-T and gene-modified cell production, including decentralized manufacturing models. He has also advanced understanding of T-cell functional dynamics and immune responses. Through patents, platforms, and translational leadership, his contributions have enabled robust Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) pipelines and improved patient access to cell-based therapies.
ESACT Innovation Award 2024 – Recipients
International CHO Genome Community represented by Prof. Michael Betenbaugh,
Dr. Kelvin H. Lee, Prof. Nathan Lewis and Prof. Nicole Borth
Award Criterion
For transforming biopharmaceutical manufacturing through collaboration and sharing of genomic and associated knowledge that benefits industry and enhances patient access to high quality medicines.
Representatives of the CHO Genome Community
Innovation Award 2024 presented by Prof. Terry Papoutsakis to the winners Prof. Michael Betenbaugh, Prof. Nicole Borth, Prof. Nathan Lewis and Prof. Kelvin Lee (absent)
CHO Genome Community
CHO are the most frequently used mammalian cell line for recombinant protein production. These cells easily adapt to different culture conditions and are characterised by high diversity and heterogeneity in behaviour which contributes to their flexibility and creates an ability to isolate variants that are able to produce large amounts of recombinant protein, ultimately serving patients. Despite the significant economic importance of CHO cells and a lack of molecular understanding of the basis for their behavior, very little genomic sequence information was publicly available in 2010. Any efforts to develop – omics understanding was performed in a proprietary setting in companies or by individual academic laboratories. The need to converge approaches and the value of establishing a well- annotated genome became evident to the broad community.
To achieve this, www.CHOgenome.org was founded in 2011 aiming to consolidate and coordinate efforts within the scientific community to establish basic data and tools for genome scale science for CHO and to apply these to generate solutions that lead to several paradigm shifts in the approaches taken in cell line and process development for manufacturing of biologics. The main drivers behind this effort were (in alphabetical order) Mike Betenbaugh (JHU), Nicole Borth (BOKU University), Kelvin H Lee (UDel) and Nathan E Lewis (UCSD), all of them contributing either fundraising or coordinative efforts, sequencing data or work on curating the assembly, the annotation or the metabolic model. The spirit behind the entire effort was driven by the realisation, that by joining forces and sharing data and resources, the scientific community could achieve so much more than any single group on their own could conceivably accomplish. The efforts of the CHO genome community has resulted in:
- The publication of several releases of a Chinese hamster reference genome with increasingly higher quality of assembly and a curated annotation linked to RefSeq.
- Several genome sequence datasets for a variety of CHO cell lines, from different lineages and histories, including host and producer cell lines.
- A community curated genome scale metabolic model for the Chinese hamster and different CHO cell lines – with new, currently ongoing, coordinative efforts to update and to combine all new developments that emerged in the meantime.
- Publicly accessible databases for these genomes, transcriptomes and proteome data, including chromatin states and epigenetic information for a variety of cell lines and culture conditions.
The broad impact of the efforts of the CHO genome community is well documented in the literature, and increasingly in industrial practice. The main achievement of the www.CHOgenome.org effort, however, remains the spirit of cooperation and data sharing that it has generated and maintained over the years: it is by now common standard that sequencing data are published and uploaded to share-points so that others can benefit from the results in a more detailed way.
Prof. Michael Betenbaugh
John Hopkins University, USA
Dr. Kelvin H. Lee
University of Delaware, USA
Prof. Nathan Lewis
University of Georgia, USA
Prof. Nicole Borth
BOKU University, Austria
ESACT Innovation Award 2022 – Recipients
Dr. Richard Wales and Mr. Neil Bargh
Dr Richard Wales and Mr. Neil Bargh are recognized as innovators in automated cell culture technologies to support clonal selection and process development for biotechnological products, biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, as well as cell and gene therapies. Notably, they were instrumental in the development, design and technical evolution of the Ambr® bioreactor systems, which closely mimic production bioreactors. The Ambr® systems have been widely adopted by the biopharmaceutical industry worldwide to accelerate process development and bring life-saving biotherapeutics to the market place.
Dr. Richard Wales
Following a first degree in Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia and subsequently a PhD at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Richard Wales completed a 4-year post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Warwick investigating the mode of action of the cytotoxin ricin. Subsequently Richard spent 6 years in the Ag-Biotech sector with Dalgety and DuPont, joining The Automation Partnership (TAP), later to become TAP Biosystems, in 2001. His various positions at TAP always combined both a technical and commercial perspective, working closely with both the engineering and marketing teams, and potential customers to bring new systems to the market. On acquisition of TAP Biosystems by Sartorius in 2013 he transferred to Sartorius central R&D function. Following a 2-year stint in Sartorius business development group, in 2019 he joined the newly established Corporate Research Group led by Sartorius CTO. Currently he has several roles in that group including program coordination, technology scouting and as head of the Concept-to-Prototype group.
Mr. Neil Bargh
Neil Bargh graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1992, after completing a 4-year Master of Engineering degree course. Subsequently, Neil joined the Automation Group of The Technology Partnership (TTP). Neil stayed with the same group as it as it transitioned into The Automation Partnership (TAP), later to become TAP Biosystems in 2001 and then acquired by Sartorius in 2013. Early in his career development projects included: automated inhaler testing machines, the original compound storage “Haystack” system and SelecT, a fully automated robotic T-Flask maintenance system. Following a 9-month career break in Australia, Neil has been responsible for the development of ambr® 15, ambr® 250 HT, ambr® 250 Modular and ambr® Crossflow. In 2017 Neil Joined PA Consulting but returned to Sartorius 16 months later to continue his technical leadership role: developing new products that assist biopharmaceutical research and development.
ESACT Innovation Award 2019 – Recipient
Dr. Volker Sandig
Dr. Sandig is recognized for seminal fundamental and applied research in cell and vector biotechnology, and the development of innovative vaccine technologies. Notably, for instigating and developing the cell-line development program at ProBioGen, AG, which resulted in one of the leading CHO platforms, the co-development of the CHO-Freedom Kit with LTC (now Thermo-Fisher), and the development of glycoengineering technologies, and notably GlymaxX at ProBioGen.
Dr. Volker Sandig
In 1987, Dr. Sandig received his Diploma in Medicine (which corresponds to an MD) from the Second Institute of Medicine (Faculty of Medical Biology), Moscow, Russia, specializing in medical biochemistry. In 1992, he received his Ph.D. (doctor rerum naturalium) in Molecular Biology from Humboldt University Berlin, Germany. His postdoctoral training from 1992 to 1996 was at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry (Berlin-Buch), Germany, in the group pf Prof. Dr. Michael Strauss. From 1997 to 2000, he was visiting scientist first (in the lab of Tom Caskey, a pioneer gene-therapy lab) and, later, Senior Research Biologist (working on vaccine development) at Merck Research Labs in West Point, PA, USA. He returned to Germany as Vice President for Cell & Vector Biology at ProBioGen AG, Berlin, where he developed the cell-line program of the company. ProBioGen AG is an established Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) and technology provider, which started in 1994 as a diagnostics company. Dr. Sandig currently serves as CSO (Chief Scientific Officer) of ProBioGen. His work aims to modernize vaccine manufacturing processes through customized design of new cell lines from primary sources that support a wide range of human and animal viruses.