Randal R. Ketchem, Ph.D.

Highlights

• One of the inventors of Evolocumab, a medication for the treatment of hyperlipidemia
• Led the development of the J.HAL® AI-driven antibody discovery platform (application)
• Performed the antibody engineering and am a listed inventor for rescuing the developability of MAM01 for malaria prophylaxis
• One of the inventors of AI-driven methods to rank order and optimize antibody sequences for developability
• Coordinated the development of and utilized the Just proprietary Abacus™ antibody analysis and design platform

Objective

To utilize my skills and experience in computational structural biology, protein and antibody engineering and optimization, and team based therapeutic development to aid in the discovery of cures for and treatment of illness and disease.

Interests

Engineering biologics-based therapeutics, inventing novel therapeutic modalities and computational methods for therapeutic design, and computational and experimental approaches to understanding and controlling biophysical properties of biological macromolecules. Research direction focused on computational structural biology while also applying skills to broader platform review and direction. Working in areas of antibody design, epitope mapping, molecular assessment, stability engineering, construct design, protein structure analysis, protein engineering, and working with therapeutic area teams to lead target development.

• Scientific Advising
• Computational structural biology
• Antibody design
• Protein stability engineering
• Therapeutic development
• Protein structure analysis
• Expert user of the Molecular Operating Environment
• Project team environments
• Computational and experimental approaches to understanding and controlling biophysical properties of biological macromolecules

Just Biotherapeutics

In 2014 a small group of scientific leaders in biotherapeutic development came together to enable the vision to "Design and apply innovative technologies to dramatically expand global access to biotherapeutics." We knew that to accomplish this mission we would have to innovate across the entire biotherapeutic discovery, design, process development, and manufacturing space. We had the shared experience of the complexity and cost of delivering biotherapeutics and knew that we could have a strong impact, opening broader markets for these life-changing therapies. We worked together in a highly collaborative team to build solutions such as AI-driven antibody discovery, antibody modality design methods, in silico and empirical antibody developability analyses, sequence optimizations, data capture and workflows across functional areas, democratized data for cross-functional applications, data and laboratory automation to increase throughput, continuous perfusion production, flexible manufacturing, and much more. My role as a Senior Vice President was to:

• Coordinate development of and utilize our proprietary Abacus antibody analysis and design platform
• Evaluate and ensure historical learning from empirical characterization data
• Select and collaborate with LabKey for the inception and ongoing development of their Biologics platform
• Build a software engineering team to enable data capture, workflows, and data automation
• Build a data science team to implement data analyses, ML/AI methods, and data governance across functions
• Build an antibody discovery team to implement our AI-driven discovery platform with both Fab and VHH
• Build an antibody engineering team for analysis, optimization design, humanization, and rational affinity design

Since the inception of Just we have accomplished much more than the impossible goals we had set for ourselves.

Publications

Patents

Invited Talks

1. AI-Derived Antibody Discovery – Humanoid Fab and VHH Biotherapeutics for Global Good
   Antibody Engineering and Therapeutics
   2022-12-07
   

2. Improving Biotherapeutic Development Through Structured Data Utilization
   Antibody Engineering and Therapeutics
   2018-12-13
   

3. Improving Biotherapeutic Development Through AI Technologies
   AI Pharma Innovation Drug Discovery
   2018-02-27
   

4. Structured Data Driven Approaches Toward Reducing the Cost of Biotherapeutics
   2017 Grand Challenges Meeting
   2017-10-03
   

5. Computational Design and High Throughput Characterization to Predict and Repair Molecular Attributes
   Protein Engineering Summit (PEGS) 2017
   2017-05-04
   

6. Therapeutic Antibody Designs for Efficacy and Manufacturability
   LabKey User Group Meeting 2016
   Recorded talk
   2016-10-06
   

7. Antibody and Protein Engineering: Developing Therapeutics
   FSU Kasha Award Seminar
   2014-04-15
   

8. Antibody Optimization Before the Storm
   PepTalk 2013
   2013-01-23
   

9. Mitigation of Monoclonal Antibody Viscosity by Modification of Protein Surface Charge
   Protein Engineering Summit (PEGS) 2012
   2012-04-30
   

10. Mediating Antibody Viscosity
    Chemical Computing Group User Group Meeting
    2010-06-03
    

11. Pacific Lutheran University
    Mining the Human Genome Using Protein Structure Homology
    2002-09-11
    

12. Western Washington University
    Mining the Human Genome Using Protein Structure Homology
    2002-06-05
    

Ph.D. Dissertation

Photography

1. Title: Sperry Peak, Fresh Snow
   Image ID: d20071201115356
   Image on RRKPhoto.com
   Outdoor Photographer, Favorite Places, November, 2011
   

2. Title:Sunrise on Sea Stacks, Reflected, Oceanside, Oregon
   Image ID: d20060721011
   Image on RRKPhoto.com
   Outdoor Photographer, 2009 Calendar
   

3. Title: Fall Color on Coal Lake #7
   Image ID: d20041002011
   Image on RRKPhoto.com
   Outdoor Photographer, Favorite Places, March, 2006
   

See my photography site at Randal R. Ketchem Photography.

Education

Employment History

Hobbies

• Photography (Randal R. Ketchem Photography)
• Hiking
• Paddle Boarding
• Boating

References