Our Team

After a Fogarty Fellowship at the NIH, he joined the faculty at JHU where he worked on developing Lentiviral vectors as delivery systems for gene therapy. After 4 years in academia, he founded his first company ViRxSys and led the team that first demonstrated the safety of Lentiviral vectors in humans with his UPenn colleagues. Later he founded Lentigen, which first developed the Lentiviral vector used to produce Kymriah™, the first FDA-approved gene therapy product.

Later, Boro saw an opportunity to integrate Lentiviral vector technology with closed-system automated cell processing devices to enable distributive place-of-care manufacturing at hospitals, potentially improving the affordability and accessibility of gene therapy products like CAR-T cells. He therefore spearheaded the acquisition of Lentigen by Miltenyi Biotec in 2014 and led the development of a global place-of-care network of clinical centers that were able to successfully manufacture CAR-T cell products and demonstrate their therapeutic benefits in clinical trials.

Seeing a need for improved business models to support the affordability and accessibility of gene therapy products, Boro co-founded Caring Cross and serves as the Executive Director.

Ibe has experience with Lentiviral, Vaccinia, and Adeno Associated Viral (AAV) Vectors. In 2013, he developed a serum free suspension (SFS) production platform for AAV. In 2016 at Lentigen, he co-developed a large-scale SFS process for LV. This process screened over 1500 candidate vectors and was used to make clinical grade batches and now in 2024 an FDA approved commercial product Tecelra. Ibe joined Caring Cross in 2021 to lead novel process development of LV and AAV production. In 2023, a new GMP scale LV production process was developed and then transferred to Vector BioMed, a Clinical Drug Manufacturing Organization (CDMO).

In 2024, entry level SFS GMP L LV and AAV processes were developed for Caring Cross’ partnership with the National Institute for Innovation in Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL). Along with the process multiple batches of AAV5-GFP were manufactured for them to serve as reference material. Ibe and his team continue to developed improved processes for LV and AAV manufacturing to improve yields and lower their cost of production.

With over 20 years of experience spanning academia, CDMO, commercial, and nonprofit sectors, Megan has served as a scientist, program manager, and operation leader at organizations including Aeras, a nonprofit tuberculosis vaccine research organization funded by the Bill and Melinda Gated Foundation, vaccine CDMO IDT Biologika, and Lentigen Technology, Inc. (Miltenyi Biotec). At Lentigen, she led efforts to establish commercial infrastructure for lentiviral vector manufacturing, supporting both internal and client programs, including one that achieved market approval in 2024.

As Director of Operations at Caring Cross, Megan draws on her diverse industry and nonprofit background to coordinate teams, projects, and daily operations, with the goal of making affordable cell and gene therapies accessible worldwide.

She focuses her research on the screening and functional validation of CAR-T cell candidates. Dr. Xiong also develops and optimizes small- and large-scale cell manufacturing workflows for implementation at academic medical centers.

Dr. Xiong obtained her Ph.D degree at the Ohio State University in 2018, where she worked on the T cell depletion optimization for allogeneic HSCT. She then worked in laboratory of Dr. Abner Notkins’ lab in NIDCR studying the function of polyreactive IgM in both innate and adaptive immune system before joining Lentigen Technology Inc. in 2015. As one of the earliest members of Lentigen R&D department, Dr. Xiong was the lead scientist for the development and production optimization of several CAR-T candidates that are right now in Phase I & II Clinical Trials.

Since joining Caring Cross in 2022, Dr. Xiong has led the selection of top CAR-T candidates for different cancer targets as well as the completion of cost-effective large-scale CAR-T manufacturing platform. With the vision of Caring Cross in mind, Dr. Xiong is currently focusing on the development of new CAR-T targets as well as supporting implementation the point-of-care CAR-T manufacturing platform at clinical centers around the world.

In 2021 Oxana joined Caring Cross to spearhead analytical assay development for LV, AAV, and CAR-T manufacturing processes and establishment of quality control SOPs for product characterization. Previously worked at Thermo Fisher Scientific as Frederick site QC lead of rapidly growing Next Generation Sequencing Division labs. SME in > 300 different technical methods: tissue culture, biochemical, immunoassays, and molecular assays. Oxana holds a B.S. in General Biology and M.S. in Genetics from the Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia.

He quickly advanced to become Chief Technology Officer and now serves as the Chief Scientific Officer. Before joining Caring Cross, Dr. Zhu was at Lentigen Technology, where he spearheaded the establishment of platforms for antibody discovery and high-throughput CAR-T development. Earlier in his career, as a Staff Scientist at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at NIH, Dr. Zhu was instrumental in establishing antibody library technologies, leading to the creation of multiple therapeutic antibodies and CAR-T therapies, some of which have advanced to clinical trials.

With over seventy publications and more than thirty patents, Dr. Zhu's scientific contributions have consistently driven the development of innovative biologics and cell therapies. He earned his Ph.D. from the Shanghai Institute of Cell Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and holds a B.Sc. in Genetics from Sichuan University, China.

With a background in R&D and entrepreneurship development, business operations, and leadership, Russ has demonstrated expertise in enhancing corporate competitiveness, developing partnerships, and overseeing research activities.