Dr. Butko Honored with Webinar of the Year for AAV Analytics
By Udayabagya(Bud) Halim, Sr. Market Analyst
This year, Dr. Margaret Butko of Adverum Biotechnologies voted Webinar of the Year for Advancing Light Scattering Assays for AAV Products, highlighting GMP-compliant DLS, FFF-MALS, and SEC-MALS strategies to characterize AAV heterogeneity, aggregation, and critical quality attributes that influence gene therapy safety and efficacy.
Each year, SelectScience invites its scientist readers and members from around the globe to nominate, review, and vote for the lab products and educational resources that have had the greatest impact on their work.
This year’s Webinar of the Year was awarded to Dr. Margaret Butko, Director of CMC Assay Development at Adverum Biotechnologies, for her webinar titled Advancing light scattering assays for AAV products, hosted by Dr. Prithwijit Sarkar, Sr. System Account Manager at Waters | Wyatt Technology [1].
The award-winning webinar introduces analytical strategies to characterize the heterogeneity of adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy products, including empty, partial, full, and aggregated capsids—critical quality attributes that directly impact safety and efficacy. Dr. Butko presented complementary light scattering approaches, including GMP-compliant dynamic light scattering (DLS) for monitoring capsid aggregation and generating standards, field-flow fractionation with multi-angle light scattering (FFF-MALS) for quantifying aggregate abundance, and SEC-MALS for measuring both aggregates and full capsids.
SEC-MALS delivers multiple AAV CQAs in a run.
"We’re thrilled to see how strongly this webinar resonated with the scientific community. Dr. Margaret Butko’s insight and expertise brought exceptional depth to this webinar. Her balanced perspective on complementary technologies and thoughtful discussion of how light-scattering techniques support rigorous AAV characterization reflect exactly the kind of clarity and scientific leadership the community needs," shared Gina Alesi, Sr. Director, Strategy & Marketing at Waters Corporation.
Congratulations to Dr. Butko on this well-deserved recognition and for her continued leadership in advancing gene therapy analysis.
Advancing light scattering assays for AAV products