Pioneering the development of point-of-care CAR T cell therapy manufacturing in Canada: experience from the CLIC-01 CD19 CAR T clinical trial

Tuesday 08:00 PST / 11:00 EST / 16:00 GMT / 17:00 CET

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Pioneering the development of point-of-care CAR T cell therapy manufacturing in Canada: experience from the CLIC-01 CD19 CAR T clinical trial

Developing a country-wide program to make lifesaving CAR T cell therapy accessible to patients is no small feat. In Canada, Dr. Natasha Kekre has been instrumental in driving the Canadian-Led Immunotherapies in Cancer (CLIC) research program to make this a reality.

In this webinar, Dr. Kekre of The Ottawa Hospital, will present the multitude of unique challenges involved and how the program overcame them to offer CAR T cell therapy to patients across Canada who may otherwise be out of options.

Established in 2016, the CLIC program brings researchers, clinicians, and patients from across Canada together to build expertise and capacity for innovation in the promising field of cellular immunotherapy for cancer. The first CLIC clinical trial was launched in 2019 at The Ottawa Hospital and at BC Cancer, with support from BioCanRx, BC Cancer, The Ottawa Hospital Foundation, and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

Attend this webinar to learn more about:

The specificities and challenges associated with autologous cell therapy manufacturing for patients across a large geography
Improving access to innovative cell therapy clinical trials
The foundational work that was necessary to launch this pioneering program

Natasha Kekre

Physician at The Ottawa Hospital

Dr Natasha Kekre is a hematologist within the Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program at The Ottawa Hospital. She is also an associate scientist within the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa. She completed her Bachelor’s in Science at the University of Windsor then obtained her medical degree from the University of Ottawa. She then trained at the University of Ottawa in Internal Medicine and Hematology. She went on to do a fellowship in stem cell transplantation at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA with a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University. Her research is focused on developing early phase clinical trials and moving home grown therapeutic strategies into patients to treat hematologic malignancies.