FirstThought Focus

Jacob Sherkow (Professor of Law, University of Illinois), will be discussing with our moderator, Neil Canavan, the historical significance of past intellectual property claims in the antibody space and also how to interpret existing patent law in the US and Europe as it relates to cell therapies in development. Jacob S. Sherkow is Professor of Law at the College of Law and Affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois, where his research focuses on the legal and ethical implications of advanced biotechnologies, especially as related to intellectual property. He is a leading expert on IP protection for genome-editing technologies, including CRISPR. Sherkow is the author of over 40 articles published in both scientific journals and traditional law reviews, including Science, Nature, the Yale Law Journal, and the Stanford Law Review.

Neil speaks with our guest Dr. Joshua Brody of Mount Sinai to give his perspective on BiTEs (Bispecific antibodies) vs. CARs. Including the differences and potential advantages of bispecific antibody therapies versus CAR-T cell therapies Joshua Brody, MD, is the Director of the Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai. Since joining Mount Sinai in 2011, he has developed a robust clinical program, as well as a translational Cancer Immunotherapy Lab which investigates basic and applied tumor immunology for the development of novel therapies, particularly for lymphomas, breast cancer, and head/neck cancer. Dr. Brody has pioneered a therapeutic vaccine approach—in situ vaccination—that induces anti-tumor immunity at the tumor site and can also cause regression of tumors throughout the body. He has also developed a way to use increase the power of immunotherapy drugs against treatment-resistant lymphomas by combining them with stem cell transplantation. Recently, his group discovered a novel approach to improve immunotherapies by preventing a common escape mechanism that tumors use to evade CAR-T and bispecific antibody therapies.

On Episode 2 of our CAR-T series, microbiologist and immunologist Joseph Fraietta, PhD (UPenn), discussed with our moderator, Neil Canavan, some of the foreseeable challenges we face with CAR-T cell therapies, including the efficacy of CARs in solid tumors, adaptive resistance, and the use of gene editing in cell therapies.  Joseph Fraietta, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Microbiology, Director of the Solid Tumor Immunotherapy Laboratory, and a part of the Center for Advanced Cellular Therapeutics at the University of Pennsylvania. As a post-doctoral fellow under the tutelage of Dr. Carl June at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Fraietta developed novel approaches for the treatment of cancer through genetic modification of T lymphocytes that contributed to the initiation of multiple clinical trials and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the first CAR T cell therapy. In 2015, Dr. Fraietta assumed the directorship of a research laboratory in the first-of-its-kind Center for Advanced Cellular Therapies, where his group led initiatives to interrogate CAR T cell infusion products for key biomarkers and mechanisms of potency, with the objective of predicting clinical responses to adoptive cell therapies. He now directs the Solid Tumor Immunotherapy Laboratory in the same center.

Our first episode on our CAR-T series is with accomplished physician expert in hematological malignancies and the CAR-T therapy space – Dr. Nirav Shah. Our moderator Neil Canavan asks Dr. Shah about the current CAR-T landscape, including a debate on autologous vs. allogeneic CAR-T cells, NK CARs, innovations in CAR-T cell therapy that are still in development. Nirav Shah, MD, MSHP, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Division of Hematology and Oncology, specializing in lymphoma and stem cell transplant at Froedtert Hospital. Clinically, he treats patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), Hodgkin's lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, leukemia, and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). He is experienced in bone marrow transplantation, autologous transplantation, allogenic transplantation, and CAR-T cell therapy for the treatment of cancer. Dr. Shah has published 247 peer-reviewed journal articles in various scientific journals on topics spanning, CAR-T therapy, immunotherapies, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s and Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and stem cell transplantation. Dr. Shah is a frequent speaker at conferences and online live panel events where he has discussed the research & development, benefits, and dosing of allogenic and autologous CAR-T cell therapies.