Rene’s career has focused on developing biotherapeutics.  Initially, he discovered protein targets for oncology antibody therapeutics while at Agensys; and, he shifted to recombinant protein production in mammalian expression systems while at Xencor and later focused on hybridoma antibody discovery after returning to Agensys.

While at Amgen Rene has led the Expression and Cell Engineering group in Biologics Optimization which produces and optimizes large molecule therapeutics.  His interests focus on engineering mammalian expression hosts for improved productivity and quality.

Featured Publications

Cai Guo, Fuyi Chen, Qiang Xiao, Hannah B. Catterall, John H. Robinson, Zhulun Wang, Marissa Mock, René Hubert.  Expression liabilities in a four-chain bispecific molecule. Biotechnology and Bioengineering on line June 10, 2021.
http://doi.org/10.1002/bit.27850

Zhao H, Atkinson J, Gulesserian S, Zeng Z, Nater J, Ou J, Yang P, Morrison K, Coleman J, Malik F, Challita-Eid P, Karki S, Aviña H, Hubert R, Capo L, Snyder J, Moon SJ, Luethy R, Mendelsohn BA, Stover DR, Doñate F.  Modulation of Macropinocytosis-Mediated Internalization Decreases Ocular Toxicity of Antibody-Drug Conjugates.  Cancer Res. 2018 Apr 15;78(8):2115-2126.
https://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/78/8/2115.long

Saffran DC, Raitano AB, Hubert RS, Witte ON, Reiter RE, and Jakobovits A.  Anti-PSCA mAbs inhibit tumor growth and metastasis formation and prolong the survival of mice bearing human prostate cancer xenografts.  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci 2000; 10:1073-1078
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC30194/pdf/pq002658.pdf

Hubert RS, Vivanco I, Chen E, Rastegar S, Leong K, Mitchell SC, Madraswala R, Zhou Y, Kuo J, Raitano AB, Jakobovits A, Saffran DC, and Afar DEH.  STEAP: A prostate-specific cell-surface antigen highly expressed in human prostate tumors. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci 1999; 96:14523-14528
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC24469/pdf/pq014523.pdf

Education

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Genomics, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center & UCLA
Ph.D., Molecular Biology, University of Southern California
B.Sc., Biology and Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Canada