Overview
The “In Vivo Engineering of Immune Cells for Cancer Immunotherapy” virtual workshop will be held on January 28 and 29, 2025. This meeting is open to the public and free to attend, but registration is required to access the event virtually.
Adoptive cellular therapies (ACT) for cancer involve complex and laborious processes, including leukapheresis, ex vivo manipulation and expansion of immune cells, and GMP cell manufacturing and production, which hampers the clinical accessibility. In contrast, the in vivo engineering of immune cells (IVEIC) approaches bypass the tedious, complex and costly process of ex vivo immune cell production by reprogramming specific immune cells in situ, thus offering a true off-the-shelf cancer immunotherapy. The IVEIC approach takes advantage of advances in in vivo gene delivery technologies using viral vectors or non-viral nanocarrier-based vehicles to deliver genetic materials of interest to immune cells, and in gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 and base-editing systems for precision gene modifications in immune cells. We envision a parallel development of in vivo cellular immunotherapies along with ACT to allow faster and broader access for patients with both hematologic and solid tumors.
Workshop Organizers
- NCI Planning Committee:
- Zhang-Zhi Hu, MD, Connie Sommers, PhD, DCTD/DTP/IOB
- Carolina Salvador Morales, PhD, DCTD/CIP/NSDB
- Minkyung Song, PhD, DCTD/CTEP
- Jerry Li, PhD, DCB
- Jonathan Franca-Koh, PhD, Jian Lou, PhD, OD/SBIR Development Center
- Co-Chairs:
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| Matthias Stephen, MD, PhD (Fred Hutch Cancer Center) |
Fyodor Urnov, PhD (University of California, Berkeley) |
Conference Objectives
- Bring together investigators from multidisciplinary fields of immuno-oncology, gene and cell engineering, and nanomaterial delivery, to present the latest research on in vivo engineering of immune cells, and to identify gaps, opportunities, and future directions.
- Provide an educational opportunity to students, trainees and early-stage investigators from multidisciplinary fields to learn and aspire to the new promising immunotherapy approaches.
- Provide timely information of discussion on comparisons between ex vivo versus in vivo immune cell engineering approaches for cellular immunotherapy to the public free of charge.
The workshop will be recorded and made available for on-demand viewing.
If you have any questions about the workshop, please contact Zhang-Zhi Hu (zhang-zhi.hu@nih.gov).