Hunting for better biomarkers of response: where is real progress being made in understanding why patients do and don’t respond to I-O therapeutics?

Adil Daud

Professor of Medicine and Dermatology, University of California; and Director of the Melanoma program, Helen Diller Family Cancer Center, UCSF

Dr Adil Daud is an expert in immunotherapy and has pioneered the development of novel immunotherapeutics and targeted therapies. His fellowship in medical oncology was at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and was a faculty member at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fl. He is currently Professor of Medicine and Dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the director of the Melanoma Program and melanoma clinical research at the Helen Diller Family Cancer Center at UCSF. He led the development of IL-12 in melanoma and has developed novel technology to deliver it in vivo. He has played a major role in developing PD-1 antibodies in cancer therapy. Recently he has developed novel assays to determine immune responsiveness in vivo. These assays can determine the likelihood of response to immune therapy and provide novel insights into immune drug development. He has collaborated on numerous clinical and translational clinical trials that have yielded insights into the use of immunotherapy.

Steven Fling

Senior Staff Scientist, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; and Lab Director, Central Immune Monitoring Lab

Steven Fling, PhD serves as Lab Director for Central Immune Monitoring Lab (CIML), overseeing correlative biomarker studies for the NCI funded CITN (Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network) and the industry funded ION (Immune Oncology Network). CITN/ION conducts early-stage, multicenter IO clinical trials, with a focus on agents/combinations to potentiate effective immune responses. Dr. Fling has >24 years research experience in T cell immunobiology, cancer vaccine and immunotherapeutic discovery, including ~13 years managing immunology research labs and directorship of collaborative research networks and consortia. Previously Dr. Fling served as Project Director for the IAVI’s Neutralizing Antibody Consortium, an international consortium working to develop a vaccine for HIV and in 2009 established lab operations at IAVI’s Neutralizing Antibody Center at the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA). In biotech R&D, Dr. Fling worked on vaccines for cancer and infectious diseases including adjuvant development at Corixa Corp (Seattle, WA) and as an Investigator in the Adjuvant Group for GSK Biologicals.

John Rossi

Senior Director, Department of Translational Medicine, Kite

I joined Kite in 2015 after 13 years at Amgen. I am currently a Senior Director in the Department of Translational Medicine at Kite and lead all pharmacology activities related to the clinical development of Kite’s cell therapy pipeline. At Kite, I have built an effective translational team to support the clinical development of axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta®) and KTE-X19 (Tecartus®). My team has contributed directly to the regulatory approval of these products through pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic evaluation. Among many achievements at Kite, I have represented the organization through external scientific presentations and collaborative manuscripts with leading academic researchers such as Steven Rosenberg and James Kochenderfer at the NCI. Accomplishments include the discovery of metrics to characterize CAR T based on functionality, novel biomarker knowledge of how CARs work in the clinic, mechanistic information on toxicities and insights into the biology of the TME, including immune checkpoints, and the role of IL-15 in the context of CAR T-cell function.

Majid Ghoddusi

Senior Director, Clinical Biomarkers, Poseida Therapeutics

Dr Ghoddusi has over 15 years of experience in some of the most challenging areas of oncology with focus on drug discovery and clinical development. Dr Ghoddusi has broad and overarching insights into unmet therapeutic areas with expertise in translational sciences and clinical biomarker development which allows him to provide unique perspective on how to propel therapeutic projects from discovery to approval. Trained as a translational pathologist he has held numerous positions at large pharmaceutical and small biotech companies including Novartis, Celgene and Juno Therapeutics. His current focus at Poseida Therapeutic is Gene and Cellular Therapy.

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