The immunoengineering field is transforming cancer, autoimmunity, regeneration, and transplantation treatments by combining the diverse and complex fields of engineering and immunology. This symposium will highlight some of the latest advances in immunoengineering with a focus on translational aspects of the field. It is also a celebration of the Johns Hopkins Translational Immunoengineering Center renewal and its accomplishments.
Date and Time
March 4, 2025, from 8:00 am – 1:00 pm ET.
Location
Chevy Chase Auditorium, Johns Hopkins Hospital
Keynote Speakers
Michel Sadelain, MD
Inaugural Director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy
Antigen Sensitivity, Logic Gating and Persistence of CAR T cells.
Michel Sadelain is the founding director of the Center for Cell Engineering at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), where he holds the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Chair, a member of the department of Medicine and the Immunology program of the Sloan Kettering Institute, and a professor at Weill-Cornell University Medical College. He received his M.D. from the University of Paris and his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta. Following his post-doctoral research at the Whitehead Institute at MIT, he joined MSK in 1994.
Sadelain has made several key contributions to the emergence and success of CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy. His research contributed to all facets of CAR therapy, including T cell engineering methodologies (via retroviral vectors or gene editing), CAR design (dual-signaling receptor concept, known as second generation CAR), the identification of CD19 as an effective CAR target, T cell manufacturing (GMP processes, in collaboration with Dr. Isabelle Rivière at MSK) and clinical translation (in acute lymphoblastic leukemia and other cancers).
Sadelain is the recipient of the Cancer Research Institute’s Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology, the NYIPLA Inventor of the Year award, the Passano, Gabbay, Pasteur-Weizman/Servier and Leopold Griffuel awards, the INSERM International Prize, the Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences and the Gairdner International Award. He previously served as President of the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy.
Robert Seder, MD
Chief, Cellular Immunology Section, Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH
Vax-Innate: Improving Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines by Modulating T cells and the Tumor Microenvironment
Robert Seder received his B.A. in Natural Science at Johns Hopkins University in 1981 and his M.D. at Tufts University in 1986 and completed his residency in internal medicine at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Seder did his postdoctoral training at NIAID with Dr. William Paul. He is currently Chief of the Cellular Immunology Section in the Vaccine Research Center in the NIAID, NIH. Seder’s laboratory has focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which vaccines and adjuvants mediate protective immunity in mouse, and non-human primate models of HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis and cancer. His work has demonstrated the importance of the quality of T cell responses in mediating protection against various infections and the importance of the route of vaccination in generating tissue resident T cells for protection against malaria and TB. Seder has translated his scientific discoveries and led the first in human clinical studies using intravenous vaccination to generate protective immunity with an attenuated malaria vaccine and recently showed that a monoclonal antibody he discovered can prevent malaria infection against intense seasonal transmission in African adults. Over the two years, Seder has helped lead the pre-clinical development of the Moderna mRNA vaccine against COVID. This provided pre-clinical data for demonstrating safety and efficacy of the Moderna vaccine in animals prior to the initiation of the pivotal Phase 3 study in humans and more recently provided the scientific basis for boosting humans with mRNA against variants.
Agenda
More information to come.