ADOPT Summit

Visit us at the ADOPT Summit March 2-3, 2016 at the Kensington Close Hotel in London, UK.

Event Site

Speaker Session

Bench to Bedside and Back: How T-Cell Gene Therapy has Benefitted from Partnership with Academia and Industry
Dr. Laurence Cooper, M.D. Ph.D.  CEO, ZIOPHARM Oncology
Thursday March 3rd 12:10 pm-12:40 pm
Balmoral Room

This talk will highlight :

• Non-viral approach to genetic modification of T cells to express chimeric antigen receptors (CARs)
• Targeting CD19 for therapy of B-cell malignancies
• Targeting carbohydrate for therapy of opportunistic fungal infection
• Designing CARs that can distinguish between tumor cells and normal cells
• Activation of T cells via of CARs in coordination with signaling through cytokine receptor

Learn how Dr. Cooper M.D. Ph.D. harnessed the power of the iQue Screener platform to profile hundreds of CAR-T cells and evaluate their cytotoxicity against tumor cells to get better insight into their therapeutic potential.

Biography

Laurence Cooper M.D., Ph.D., serves as Chief Executive Officer of ZIOPHARM Oncology and maintains a position as a Visiting Scientist at MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC). Dr. Cooper joined ZIOPHARM in 2015, following the licensing agreement between Intrexon and ZIOPHARM with MDACC. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Cooper was a tenured Professor at The University of Texas with joint appointments in the Division of Pediatrics and Department of Immunology. He joined MDACC in 2006 as Section Chief of Cell Therapy at the Children’s Cancer Hospital at MDACC where he cared for children undergoing bone marrow transplantation and led scientific efforts to develop new treatment approaches that pair genetic engineering with immunotherapies. Dr. Cooper has coauthored dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles, abstracts, and book chapters. He has initiated multiple trials under INDs infusing T cells and NK cells. He is undertaking the first protocols using a new approach to gene therapy of genetically modified T cells based upon the Sleeping Beauty transposon/transposon system and has helped develop clinical-grade artificial antigen presenting cells for numerically expanding and activating immune cells.