Henry (Hank) George brings expertise in research and product development through professional experience in small biotechnology and large pharmaceutical industries.

Henry received his B.A. degree in biology from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 1976 and performed graduate studies in genetics at Florida State University and biochemistry at St. Louis University. Since 1981, Henry has worked in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors, developing recombinant protein expression systems in bacterial, insect, and mammalian hosts. In 1981, he joined Molecular Genetics, Inc. (Minnetonka, MN), an early biotechnology leader, developing bacterial expression systems to produce recombinant proteins for agricultural uses (e.g., animal vaccines and animal growth hormones). In 1988, he joined R&D Systems, Inc (Mpls, MN), a present-day leader in the development and manufacturing of research reagents, forming a gene expression group responsible for producing various mammalian cytokines in bacterial and insect systems. His group generated many of the initial products currently marketed by R&D. From 1990 through early 2001, and he was with the DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company (now part of Bristol Myers Squibb Company, Wilmington DE) as a Principal Investigator. His laboratory efforts at DuPont continued to focus on developing and using high-level expression systems for the production (analytical and large scale) of pharmaceutically essential proteins.  In early 2001, he joined Sigma-Aldrich Company as an R&D manager developing products such as the FLAG® protein expression system and the Mission™ lentiviral-based shRNA libraries for gene silencing human and mouse genes. In 2010, he joined Sigma’s SAFC Division as Manager of Cell Sciences and Development (CSD) group. He led a team that developed an improved and novel CHO cell line (CHOZN) for the monoclonal antibody production platform via Sigma’s CompoZr™ ZFN technologies.

In 2016, he joined the Gene Editing and Novel Modalities R&D group within MilliporeSigma to lead a new team (Viral Vector Producing Cell Lines), focusing on improving the production systems and bioprocesses for viral vector manufacturing for gene therapy applications. That team has developed a novel suspension cell-based production platform (Virus Express™) for the large-scale manufacturing of r-lentiviral vectors.

Henry’s research experience covers a multitude of scientific disciplines, including molecular biology, gene expression, cell biology, virology, and protein chemistry. His work has resulted in publications in journals such as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Biochemistry, and DNA.