Luis Álvarez-Vallina
Luis Álvarez-Vallina attended Medical School at Oviedo University and completed a residency in Immunology at the Clínica Puerta de Hierro (Madrid). Luis earned a PhD in Immunology from the Autónoma University of Madrid and spent four years at the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering (Cambridge, UK). His work contributed to the first generation of CARs with costimulatory domains. Currently, he is Associate Professor at Aarhus University (Denmark) where he leads the Immunotherapy and Cell Engineering group. He is also heading the Cancer Immunotherapy Unit at Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, and Director Immunology Chair Merck- Francisco de Vitoria University (Spain). His experience includes generation of multispecific antibodies, and the development of cancer immunotherapy strategies based on the adoptive transfer of genetically engineered cells secreting bispecific antibodies.
Peter Emtage
Dr. Emtage currently serves as Chief Scientific Officer at Cell Design Labs, Inc. (CDL). Prior to joining CDL, he was Vice President of Synthetic Immunology at Intrexon Corporation and was Vice President of Immune Mediated Therapy in the Oncology Innovative Medicines group at Medimmune. At Medimmune, Dr. Emtage designed and implemented a comprehensive immune therapy cancer strategy. He has over sixteen years of biologics development experience in the fields of oncology, autoimmunity, infectious diseases, and inflammation. Dr. Emtage holds a B.S. and M.S. in Molecular Biology and Genetics from the University of Guelph and received his Ph.D. in Molecular Virology, Immunology and Inflammation at McMaster University. At the beginning of his career, he also was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health and held roles at Aventis Pasteur and Harvard Medical School.
Stefano Baila
Stefano Baila received his PhD in 2007 based upon translational research and development of gene therapies for hemophilia at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Since that time he has been actively involved in the process development and manufacturing of advanced therapeutic medicinal products through business development and strategic marketing roles at Areta International, a CDMO, and by leading field implementation and commercialization activities for the cell processing unit of Terumo BCT. Stefano also worked as Industrialization Manager at Celyad where he led process development and automation efforts for CAR-T therapeutics. Now he serves as Director of Operation and Business Development for Anemocyte.
Professor Elmar Jaeckel
Dr Ignacio Anegon
Francois Meyer
Dr Sophie Papa
Sophie Papa is a Senior Lecturer and Consultant Medical Oncologist at King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Sophie undertook her medical training at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. She completed a PhD in cancer immunotherapy from King’s College London in 2011. She is a clinical academic with research interests in the field of immune-oncology. Her research interests include developing approaches to optimise personalised cell based immune therapies for solid tumour oncology and understanding adverse immune reactions triggered by checkpoint inhibitor therapy. She is also interested in the delivery of complex cell therapy trials for solid tumour indications. Sophie is a medical oncologist with a practice in malignant melanoma and is the lead for skin cancer research at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
Lynsey Whilding
Dr Lynsey Whilding is a postdoctoral research associate with nearly 10 years experience in cell and gene therapy. She currently works in the “CAR Mechanics” research group at King’s College London and is a consultant for the biotechnology company Leucid Bio. Lynsey undertook a PhD in viral gene therapy at the Barts Cancer Institute within Queen Mary University from 2008-2012. She then started a research position at Imperial College and moved to King’s College London in 2014 to continue developing chimeric antigen receptor T-cells for the treatment of solid tumours. Research has included pre-clinical testing of T4 CAR T-cells that target the extended ErbB family and a CAR targeting the integrin alpha v beta 6. A particular focus is on pancreatic cancer although the group investigates a number of CAR target antigens across multiple diseases and is running a Phase I clinical trial in patients with head and neck cancer, involving the intra-tumoural delivery of ErbB-targeted “T4” autologous T-cells.
Professor Andrew Sewell
Andy Sewell’s research interests have focused around how organisms deal with environmental adversity. He began his career at the University of Liverpool by applying his training in chemistry towards phytoremediation strategies. He then moved to the University of Utah in 1990 to work on gene activation by environmental stress and was promoted to the Faculty there in 1994. Tugged heartstrings saw him return to Oxford in 1995 to work on the strategies HIV and other viruses use to subvert human T-cell immunity. That same Welsh girl was influential in his relocation to Cardiff in 2006 to take up a position as Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Medicine. He continues in Cardiff and is currently a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator. His research focuses on T-cell antigens and the receptors that recognize them. This takes the Sewell laboratory in many different directions including transplant tolerance, autoimmune disease, immunity to infection and cancer immunotherapy. Of relevance to this meeting, the Sewell laboratory uses engineered T-cell receptors, chimeric antigen receptors and engineered T-cell ligands (peptides and synthetic compounds) to manipulate the immune system for therapeutic benefit. The Sewell lab is also dissecting out what the predominant cancer-specific T-cells respond to following successful tumour infiltrating lymphocyte therapy for melanoma and other cancers.
