Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy

Congratulations to Katy Rezvani on receiving this important award from Lindonlight Collective! ACGT is proud to have Dr. Rezvani as a member of our Scientific Advisory Council and excited to see her work advance in pediatric brain cancers.

Led by ACGT Research Fellow Joseph Fraietta researchers at University of Pennsylvania published a breakthrough paper addressing T-cell exhaustion and demonstrating that TET2 regulates early and late transitions in exhausted CD8+ T cell differentiation and limits CAR T cell function https://lnkd.in/dKmA53Yt

Vyriad, a clinical-stage biotechnology company led by ACGT Scientific Advisory Council member Dr. Stephen J Russell and ACGT Research Fellow Kah-Whye Peng, announces and new collaboration with Novartis leveraging Vyriad’s active targeting lentiviral vector platform and Novartis expertise and leadership in cell therapy innovation to advance in-vivo CAR T-cell therapies. https://lnkd.in/gtvk2WtV

Today is World Pancreatic Cancer Day. ACGT is dedicated to bringing the promise of cell and gene therapy to bear on the toughest to treat cancers like pancreatic cancer. That's why we launched the ACGT – Edward Netter Memorial Investigator Award in Cell and Gene Therapy for Pancreatic Cancer Research. The response to this call to action by cancer cell and gene researchers has been impressive and we look forward to announcing the awardees early in 2025. With new therapies in development like mRNA vaccines, CAR T-cell therapies, T-cell receptors (TCRs) and Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TILs) we are making advances that patients with diseases like pancreatic cancer are waiting for. If you'd like to help Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy meet our mission by funding researchers like Sidi Chen, Amer Zureikat, and Matthias Stephan we welcome donations and collaborations with life-science industry partners! Make our mission yours on #WorldPancreaticCancerDay

With FDA approval, an ovarian cancer patient received a second round of CAR T-cell therapy to treat her recurrent ovarian cancer. The initial CAR T treatment prevented any new cancer growth, this second treatment it is hoped will help eliminate any remaining tumor. https://lnkd.in/g_mzJ9mJ

Crystal Mackall, MD, and Michelle Monje, MD, PhD led a clinical trial of CAR T-cell therapy for children with a normally incurable brain cancer. For one teenager, all traces of the cancer disappeared from brain scans, and he is thriving four years later. Of the 11 participants who received CAR-T cells in the trial, nine showed benefits. Nine had functional improvement in the disabilities caused by their disease. Four had the volume of their tumors reduced by more than half. And one of those four participants had a complete response, meaning his tumor disappeared from brain scans. At ACGT we are dedicated to funding breakthrough research like the development of this GD2 CAR T-cell that is changing the lives of young patients who previously had no good treatment options. Congratulations to Drs. Mackall and Monje on their outstanding work! https://lnkd.in/g9gCdqVv

Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual conference wraps up for another year!

New CAR T-Cell Therapy Approved for Leukemia - The FDA has approved AUCATZYL® (obecabtagene autoleucel – obe-cel) for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). “Adult ALL is an extremely aggressive cancer, and there is a high unmet medical need that exists in the treatment of patients with this disease once they relapse, where historically they suffer from poor outcomes,” said Elias Jabbour, MD, U.S. lead investigator of the FELIX study and professor of Leukemia, ALL Section Chief, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.  “This milestone approval, based on the demonstrated clinical benefit of AUCATZYL, brings new hope for adult patients with relapsed/refractory B-ALL.” https://lnkd.in/gm2DMrnc

If you are attending Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) annual meeting, Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy symposium is on Friday November 8 11:30. Speakers include ACGT Scientific Advisory Council members Dr. Crystal Mackall, Dr. Shari Pilon-Thomas and Research Fellow Dr. George Coukos. Registration is open but space is limited - link below: https://lnkd.in/grh8UKt8

Less than a year later, the FDA is reconsidering the Black Box warning on CAR T-cell therapies according to Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). “The point […] is really well taken, which is that for lymphomas, a risk of 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 5,000 for a secondary lymphoma, or 1 in 1,000, is probably fully acceptable when in this salvage setting where the standard chemotherapies are associated oftentimes with […] even 1% of 2% of secondary malignancies.” commented Marks in the article shared below. Good news for patients who need more access to these therapies not less!