Fate Therapeutics hosted a focus session at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) that included a detailed review of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology and highlighted the company’s advancements in the development of recently engineered NK- and T-cell cancer immunotherapies.
The focus session, “Fighting Cancer with Off-the-Shelf iPSC Immunotherapies,” covered topics from basic research to clinical development while discussing the genetic engineering of pluripotent cells (stem cells that can differentiate into several types of tissues), the derivation and expansion of single pluripotent cell clones, and the generation of ready-made NK- and T-cells, with improved functions from pluripotent cells. Participating speakers included:
- Bob Valamehr, Ph.D. (Fate Therapeutics’ executive director of Cancer Immunotherapy);
- Dan Kaufman, M.D., Ph.D. (University of California San Diego professor of medicine and director of the Cell Therapy Program);
- Daniel Shoemaker, Ph.D. (Fate Therapeutics’ chief scientific officer);
- Michel Sadelain, M.D., Ph.D. (director of the Center for Cell Engineering and Stephen and Barbara Friedman Chair at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center);
- Rudolf Jaenisch, M.D. (professor of biology at MIT and member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research).
Fate Therapeutics is a biopharma based in San Diego dedicated to developing programmed cellular immunotherapies for cancer and immune disorders. The company’s pipeline includes immuno-oncology programs, ready-made NK- and T-cell cancer immunotherapies derived from induced pluripotent cells and immuno-regulatory programs (like hematopoietic cell immunotherapies to protect the immune systems of patients who need a hematopoietic cell transplant).
According to a press release, some of these immunotherapies will be presented at the ISSCR Annual Meeting:
- “The Scalable Derivation of Off-the-Shelf and Genetically-Enhanced Hematopoietic Cellular Therapeutics from Naïve Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells” will be presented by Raedun Clarke, Ph.D., who is a senior scientist of hematopoietic differentiation.
- “Evaluation of Multiple Safe Guard System for Improved Safety Profile of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Derived Cellular Therapeutics” will be presented by Ramzey Abujarour, Ph.D., who is also a senior scientist of reprogramming biology.
- “Derivation of Natural Killer Cells from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells for Universal Off-the-Shelf Tumor Immunotherapy” will be presented by Ryan Bjordahl, Ph.D.
