Chris Tipper grew up just outside Worcester, Massachusetts, surrounded by the natural beauty of woods and fields. He was also witness to the early academic energy of UMass Medical, where his father, a professor and founding chair of microbiology, sparked his fascination with the living world. He pursued this curiosity at Swarthmore College, earning a BA in Biology before gaining hands-on experience as a lab technician. His academic path then took him to the University of Washington, where he completed a master’s degree while studying Agrobacterium—an experience that ignited his interest in inter-kingdom gene transfer. This passion led him back East to pursue a PhD at Tufts School of Biomedical Science under the mentorship of renowned retrovirologist John Coffin.

Chris continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard with Joe Sodroski, focusing on the in vitro and in vivo assembly and uncoating of lentiviral capsids. His findings contributed significantly to the understanding of gene delivery mechanisms, drawing the attention of bluebird bio, where he transitioned into industry. At bluebird, he devised and patented a method to enhance lentiviral transduction efficiency across pooled CD34+ cell subpopulations—an innovation that expanded treatment eligibility and improved patient outcomes.

As head of upstream development and later vector engineering at Dimension Therapeutics, Chris played a key role in scaling AAV producer cell development and advancing gene therapy programs for HemA, OTC, and GSDIa. He also co-developed three additional pipeline programs, including one for Wilson Disease. His drive to push AAV gene therapy further led him to the Grousbeck Gene Therapy Center at MEEI, where he built and led a team specializing in AAV library screening. Their work quickly generated critical insights, identifying a key domain responsible for liver tropism across AAV clades—findings with potential applications in myo- and neurotropic therapies.

This pioneering work laid the foundation for Affinia Therapeutics, where Chris helped establish the company and its proprietary AAV libraries as core intellectual property. As VP of Vector Discovery, he expanded NGS-based capsid screening, accelerating the development of novel AAV variants. His team also played a pivotal role in preclinical R&D, collaborating across departments to drive candidate selection and define key models and endpoints.

Most recently, as SVP of R&D at Excision Biotherapeutics, Chris navigated the complexities of bringing gene editing products to the clinic, overseeing informatics, regulatory submissions, IP, and operations. Although his tenure there was cut short by the economic realities of small biotech, he embraced the opportunity to launch his own consulting practice—continuing his mission to bring gene and cell therapies from the bench to the clinic.

Beyond the lab, Chris is an avid mycologist, woodworker, mountain biker, and runner, always seeking new challenges both in science and in the great outdoors.

CV and resume available upon request.