Sowmya Viswanathan, PhD, on Translating Cell Therapies to the Clinic at ISCT 2024

“It was a really nice session, because it showed this kind of progression from a simpler product and design to sort of more and more complex products, and what that means in terms of challenges for the companies, how to raise money and how to get return on investment, so from a commercial perspective, but also on the clinical side, what it means to follow patients for long term, and what it means from kind of manufacturing and the process development, and how complex that is to generate these products.”

The Translation to Clinic plenary of the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT) 2024 Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, from May 29 - June 1, brought together sponsors developing cell and gene therapies in the clinical stage and earlier research stage, including Sai Kiang Lim, PhD, from A*Star Institute of MolecularBiology in Singapore; Marcus Yountz, MD, FAAN, from BlueRock Therapeutics, and Bob Velamehr, PhD, from Fate Therapeutics, with Sowmya Viswanathan, PhD, scientist, Osteoarthritis Program, Division of Orthopedic Surgery, Schroeder Arthritis Institute and Krembil Research Institute, University Health Network) andAssociate Professor, Institute of Biomedical Engineering and, Division of Hematology, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto chairing the session, to discuss the development process.

CGTLive® spoke with Viswanathan to learn more about the plenary. She shared the perspectives that each speaker brought to the discussion, including Lim’s early work with extracellular vesicles, BlueRock’s experiences with developing its cell therapy for the potential treatment of Parkinson disease, and Fate Therapeutics’ work with gene-edited cell therapies.

REFERENCE

Viswanathan S, Valamehr B, YountzM, Lim SK. Translation to Clinic Plenary. Cell Therapies: Coming of Age, No Longer Just a Concept. Presented at: ISCT 2024 Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, from May 29 – June 1.