Ryan Hughes is a Scientist for the downstream process development group at Alphazyme. His background includes 8 years of biological and analytical chemistry, both at the lab and manufacturing scale, specializing in the expression and purification of recombinant proteins and VLPs. His graduate work at the University of Kentucky focused on small molecule glycosylation technologies and applications through the use of an engineered, recombinant protein. This work exposed him to a wide range of techniques in the areas of protein expression, small molecule and protein purification, assay development and validation, and small molecule characterization through LC/MS and NMR. Prior to Alphazyme, Ryan worked in the process development group for Merck’s Virginia manufacturing site. There he focused on upstream and downstream process optimization and operational scale down models for both AKTA purification and tangential flow filtration in support of the site’s the manufacturing processes.