Volker Schellenberger (Past Speaker)

Dr. Volker Schellenberger is the President and CEO of Amunix Operating Inc., which he co-founded with Willem “Pim” Stemmer in 2006. He initially served as Amunix’ Chief Scientific Officer and is the lead inventor of the company’s XTENTM half-life extension and drug payload delivery technology. XTEN enables the engineering of biotherapeutics with long in-vivo half-life and low safety risk due to their biodegradable nature. XTENylated pharmaceuticals can be efficiently produced by recombinant expression as well as by bioconjugation. The favorable properties of XTEN have been confirmed in multiple clinical trials.
Dr. Schellenberger has over 20 years of industry experience in protein engineering and drug discovery. Prior to co-founding Amunix he served as head of Genencor’s protein engineering department.

Dr. Schellenberger received his Ph.D. from Leipzig University, where he studied protease catalyzed peptide synthesis. After postdoctoral studies at the Institute for Protein Research in Pushchino (Russia), he moved to the University of Göttingen where he developed a novel method for the production of peptides from recombinant peptide-multimers. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Bill Rutter at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Schellenberger joined Genencor in 1994. Dr. Schellenberger is the author of over 40 scientific papers and an inventor on more than 70 issued and pending patent applications. He is also the recipient of the Karl Lohman award of the German Society of Biochemists.