Alain Pralong, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
Alain is a senior life science executive with 25+ years of experience in biopharmaceutical development, GMP manufacturing, and quality assurance. After earning a PhD in apoptosis research from the University of Berne, he held early roles at Schering-Plough, Roche—where he led the tech transfer of Avastin manufacturing from Genentech to Basel—and Merck-Serono, overseeing commercial hormone production. At Crucell, he led process and analytical development, including clinical manufacturing of adenoviral vaccines. Following Crucell’s $2.4B acquisition by Johnson & Johnson, Alain became VP at GSK, overseeing late-stage development and launch readiness for Mosquirix® and Shingrix®. Since 2015, he has led CMC and manufacturing in cell and gene therapy at Cell Medica, Agentus, and Gamida Cell. Most recently, he was CTO of Unicyte and supported the WHO mRNA Technology Transfer Programme through LMIC biomanufacturing site assessments.