Carsten Riether is an Associate Professor at the Department of Medical Oncology, Inselspital, University Hospital and University of Bern, Switzerland. He is also the Principal Investigator and Head of Research. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroimmunology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in 2008. He is a trained immunologist with a proven track record in cancer stem cell biology. His research focuses on understanding how immune cells and immune-related factors regulate cancer stem cells in solid tumors and leukemias. He and his collaborators contributed seminal studies to the field of cancer stem cells and translated pre-clinical findings into clinical testing. Thereby they paved the way amongst others for the development of the human CD70 antibody cusatuzumab.
Zhen Li is a Principal Scientist and Deputy Focus Area Leader for Disc and Cartilage Biology at the ARI (having been at ARI since 2004). She obtained her bachelor's degree in Bioengineering at Chu Kechen Honors College, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. She then carried out her doctoral thesis at AO Research Institute Davos (ARI) and Zhejiang University in the field of cartilage tissue engineering between 2005 and 2010. In 2010–2011, she worked as an Assistant Professor at the School of Medicine, Shandong University in China. In 2011, she returned to ARI for research on cartilage and intervertebral disc regenerative medicine. In 2015, she took a visiting scholarship at Tokai University School of Medicine in Japan. In 2017, she was appointed as Guest Professor at the medical school, Shenzhen University, China. She is an International Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Orthopaedic Translation, eCM Journal International Review Panel Member, JOR Spine Advisory Review Board Member, ORS Spine Section Board Member, European Development Committee Member of the International Chinese Musculoskeletal Research Society (ICMRS), and a member of EORS, TERMIS, OARSI and ICRS. She received the ORS Spine Section & JOR Spine Early Career Award in 2020, and the AO Spine Europe Young Researcher Award in 2016. Her research interests focus on Musculoskeletal Regeneration.
Benjamin Gantenbein is a Molecular Biologist and has been assigned to the University of Bern to conduct basic and applied research in the field of the spine emotional segment. He is leading a research group in the Tissue & Organ Mechanobiology (TOM)-Group at the Institute for Surgical Technology and Biomechanics (ISTB). His current research focuses on intervertebral disc repair using biomaterials as scaffolds, mesenchymal stem cells, or a combination thereof. He started his career at the University of Bern in the field of evolutionary biology/phylogenetics where he completed his Master of Science degree and also his Ph.D. at the Computational and Molecular Population Genetics (CMPG) laboratory. He then received two fellowships (SNF young scientists and a Marie Curie IHP substitute) to focus on animal molecular evolutionary rates at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh. From there he moved to the Genetics and Molecular Ecology Laboratory at Cambridge University, where he focused on recombination in animal mitochondria. Before the current assignment, he entered into the field of intervertebral disc research at the AO Research Institute in Davos, where he acquired experience in modern concepts of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. He teaches lectures on Principles of Human Medicine and Tissue Engineering in the Biomedical Masters course. He also teaches regenerative medicine at the University of Fribourg.
