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Drew Weissman, MD, PhD
Keynote Speaker, Thursday, September 26
Dr. Weissman's laboratory focuses on the study of RNA and innate immune system biology and the application of these findings to vaccine research and gene therapy. There are three main projects in his laboratory. The first project began through the use of mRNA encoding antigen as a delivery system to load dendritic cells to promote broad immune responses as part of a vaccine. This project has expanded to include basic studies of RNA immunogenicity and translation and the development of applications for gene therapy.
Robert Negrin, MD
Keynote Speaker, Friday, September 27
Robert S. Negrin is a Professor of Medicine and former Chief of the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Stanford University from 2000-2020. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley and MD from Harvard University.
Geoffrey Hill, MD, FRACP, FRCPA
Dr. Geoffrey Hill is a physician-scientist who specializes in blood stem cell transplantation. He is one of the top authorities on the transplant complication known as graft-vs.-host disease, or GVHD. In particular, Dr. Hill focuses on the immunological mechanisms initiating both acute and chronic forms of GVHD.
Paula Cannon, PhD
Paula Cannon, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor of Microbiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, where she leads a research team that studies viruses, stem cells and gene therapy. She obtained her PhD from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, and received postdoctoral training as an HIV scientist at both Oxford and Harvard universities.
Pietro Genovese, PhD
The Genovese lab is a translational gene therapy research group that exploit a variety of cutting-edge gene editing technologies (CRISPR/Cas, TALEN, ZFN, base editors, epigenetic transcriptional regulators) to develop new therapeutic strategies for inherited and oncologic diseases. We couple advanced molecular and cell biology approaches, such as viral vectors design, chimeric antigen receptors (CAR), next generation sequencing and ex vivo manipulation of stem cells and primary lymphocytes, with suitable preclinical models of disease to test novel therapeutics based on precision medicine both in vitro and in vivo.
David Williams, MD
The Williams lab investigates the biology of hematopoietic stem cells, focusing on analysis of the function of members of the Rho GTPase family. They have demonstrated that Rac GTPases are key regulators of the engraftment and mobilization functions of hematopoietic stem cells.
Rayne Rouce, MD
Dr. Rayne Rouce is a physician at Texas Children's Cancer Center where she is a member of the Bone Marrow Transplant/Stem Cell Transplant Program. Her clinical time is spent seeing leukemia and lymphoma patients. Dr. Rouce is board certified in pediatrics and pediatric hematology/oncology by the American Board of Pediatrics.
Helen Heslop, MD, DSc
Helen Heslop is a physician-scientist engaged in translational research focusing on adoptive immunotherapy with gene-modified effector cells, to improve hemopoietic stem cell transplantation and cancer therapy. A key step in this strategy has been the translation of laboratory findings to Phase I and II clinical trials, as exemplified by studies of Epstein Barr virus-induced lymphoproliferative disease (EBV-LPD), a fatal complication in about 15% of recipients of unrelated or mismatched family member bone marrow transplants in the early 1990s.
Robbie Majzner, MD
Robbie Majzner is the Director of the Pediatric and Young Adult Cancer Cell Therapy Program at Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Boston Children’s Hospital. He is focused on the development and deployment of immunotherapies for pediatric cancer. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School followed by training in pediatrics at New York Presbyterian-Columbia and pediatric hematology-oncology at Johns Hopkins and the National Cancer Institute.
Shivani Srivastava PhD
Dr. Shivani Srivastava works to improve cancer immunotherapies, treatments which harness the immune system to treat tumors. In particular, she focuses on immune cells known as T cells, which can seek out and selectively kill infected or diseased cells. Capitalizing on this ability, scientists have genetically engineered T cells to kill tumor cells. The first F.D.A.-approved T-cell based immunotherapies used a lab-created anti-cancer receptor known as a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR, to guide engineered T cells to cancer.
Kole Roybal, PhD
In the Roybal Lab we harness the tools of synthetic and chemical biology to enhance the therapeutic potential of engineered immune cells. We take a comprehensive approach to cellular engineering by developing new synthetic receptors, signal transduction cascades, and cellular response programs to enhance the safety and effectiveness of adoptive cell therapies. We also study the logic of natural cellular signaling systems, and the underlying principles of cellular communication and collective cell behavior during an immune response.
Lawrence Fong, MD
Dr. Lawrence Fong studies the strategies solid tumors use to resist immunotherapy. He will lead efforts to scale up Fred Hutch's solid tumor immunotherapy research.
Mary Philip, MD, PhD
Dr. Philip's research program utilizes clinically-relevant genetic cancer mouse models to understand the molecular and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms underlying TST dysfunction and design cutting-edge strategies to override TST dysfunction to improve cancer immunotherapy.
John DiPersio, MD, PhD
Dr. DiPersio’s research focuses on fundamental and translational aspects of leukemia and stem cell biology. These studies include identification of genetic abnormalities in human leukemias, understanding processes involving stem cell and leukemia cell trafficking and clinical and translational programs in both leukemia/MDS and stem cell transplantation.
Motoko Koyama, MD, PhD
Dr. Motoko Koyama's investigations highlight the importance of patients' pre-transplant gut microbiomes in influencing their post-transplant outcomes.
Robert Jenq, MD
The Jenq Laboratory examines the impact of the microbiome on cancer treatment, focusing in particular on bone marrow transplantation and cancer immunotherapies. Data from our group and others has demonstrated that the microbiome can be a potent modulator of cancer treatment efficacy and toxicity. Using a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates patient biospecimen collection, microbiome sequencing, computational methods, functional assays and pre-clinical models, we hope to develop and translate strategies to target the microbiome to further increase treatment efficacy while reducing toxicities.
Sophie Pascezny, MD, PhD
Dr. Sophie Paczesny is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology as well as Co-Leader of the Cancer Immunology Program at the Hollings Cancer Center, Medical University of South Carolina. She was previously Tenured Professor of Pediatrics and Immunology at Indiana University School of Medicine, where she led the Biomarkers Stem Cell Transplantation Program and held the Nora Letzter Chair in Pediatrics.
Nada Hamad, BSc MSc, MBBS, FRACP, FRCPA
Professor Nada Hamad is a senior staff specialist bone marrow transplant, clinical and laboratory hematologist at St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney, where she is also director of the hematology clinical trials unit. She is President of the Bone Marrow Transplant Society of Australia and New Zealand, Chair of the ACI NSW BMT network and Chair of ALLG BMTCT working group.