Yildirim is a gene and cell therapy construct engineer with fifteen years of experience designing the genetic systems behind experimental medicines. His work spans oncology, hematopoietic stem cell engineering, lentiviral vectors, multicistronic expression cassettes, mRNA and DNA constructs, VLP-mediated gene-transfer tools, reporter systems, and bioanalytical assays.
Yil trained at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center across leukemia research, stem-cell engineering, iPSC biology, epigenetics, and oncology-relevant cell-therapy models. His work included lentiviral tools for modeling myeloid disease in human cord-blood hematopoietic stem cells, bioluminescent cancer-cell tracing, mesothelioma cell-biology models, CRISPR-based epigenetic assay development, iPSC generation, and T-cell-mediated GVHD suppression with preserved antitumor activity. His pUltra and pUltra-hot lentiviral vectors were deposited to Addgene and became widely used tools for fluorescent multicistronic gene expression.
At AVROBIO in Cambridge, MA, Yil helped drive preclinical and clinical lentiviral HSC gene-therapy programs for Fabry, Pompe, Cystinosis, and Hunter syndrome. He designed, cloned, screened, and optimized therapeutic vectors; improved expression in human CD34+ cells through promoter and signal-peptide engineering; transferred assays and protocols to CROs and manufacturers; supported CMC and regulatory work; and led IND-enabling proof-of-concept studies. He is first author on the Pompe HSC gene-therapy variant-screening study that helped advance the program.
Yil later joined Moderna Therapeutics as Associate Director in Transgene Biology and Genomics, leading mRNA and DNA construct design for novel gene-transfer tools, mRNA-based virus-like particle development, RNA-protection and reverse-transcription bioassays, and CRISPR/Cas9 reporter cell-line generation for guide-RNA screening.
Yil holds a PhD and MS in Biology from Leibniz University Hannover, with training across molecular and cell biology, experimental hematology, immunology, and genetics.
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