Lynda Tussey

Dr Tussey has been a senior researcher, director and executive manager of vaccine development for over 20 years. She specializes in the transition of products from discovery to clinical stage.

Prior to Crozet Biopharma, Dr Tussey was Chief Scientific Officer at VaxInnate Corporation where she managed VaxInnate’s vaccine portfolio. In this role, she oversaw the discovery and early development of recombinant, infectious disease vaccines against Dengue, Zika, Clostridium difficile and RSV. During this time, she also oversaw the preclinical and clinical development of novel, recombinant pandemic and seasonal influenza vaccines which utilized a Toll Like Receptor-based adjuvant platform. From her work at VaxInnate, she gained extensive experience in the development of translational models supporting vaccine development, immune based assays supporting process development and product stability, Phase 1 through 2 clinical trial design, early stage regulatory submissions including regulatory considerations for novel adjuvants and finally development and management of Intellectual Property. While at VaxInnate, Dr Tussey also served as the Principal Investigator and Program Manager for a $117 million contract from HHS in support of VaxInnate’s influenza vaccine platform.

Prior to VaxInnate, Dr Tussey served as a Senior Research Fellow at Merck Research Labs where she led a research group developing novel T cell based assays for the evaluation of clinical responses to different HIV vaccine regimens. Before joining Merck, Dr Tussey led a cancer immunotherapeutics program at Purdue Pharma and prior to that she managed a research group developing novel T cell based therapeutics at GSK.

Dr Tussey received her PhD at the University of California-Berkeley where she studied classical and molecular genetics. Her post-doctoral work, at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, focused on molecular mechanisms of T cell based immunity. Later, she received a Hitchings Elion Fellowship for the study of T cell immunity at the University of Oxford. She has authored over 40 publications, presented extensively at scientific meetings and has multiple issued patents.