Gregory P. Howard, Ph.D., is a Patent Agent at McAndrews. He focuses on domestic and foreign patent prosecution, patent opinion analysis, inter partes reviews, and ex parte reexaminations. His work covers a range of technologies, including biotechnology, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostics.

Gregory earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, where he was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow. There, he designed and developed nanoparticle and hydrogel vaccine platforms for infectious disease prevention and cancer treatment. His dissertation focused on the synergistic combination of reprogrammed adjuvants, lymph node-targeting vaccines, and hydrogel vaccine depots to produce single-administration vaccines for malaria and HIV with similar efficacy to traditional prime-boost vaccination regimens. Other work included the development of biomaterials for non-viral and viral gene therapy, small-molecule delivery for the treatment of cancer, sustained-release nanoparticle platforms for therapeutic delivery, and the application of hydrogels in regenerative medicine. Additional work on cancer vaccines involved using patient-derived neoantigens in combination with various adjuvants, checkpoint inhibitors, and delivery modalities including lipid nanoparticles, nanoparticles formed by complexation, and polymeric nanoparticles.

Before starting his graduate work, Gregory was an NIH Oxford Scholar at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Oxford, where he worked on developing antibody therapeutics for the Ebola virus, as well as assessing human serological samples for an Ebola virus vaccine clinical trial. Gregory received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering, summa cum laude, with minors in Chemistry and Mathematics from the University of Akron as an Honors Scholar. During his undergraduate studies, he worked on various research projects, including the development of novel biomaterials for gene therapy with applications in cancer therapeutics and preeclampsia treatment. For his research contributions, Gregory was a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar.