Mastering allogeneic NK cell therapies: flexibility, robustness, and speed to clinic

Sunday 08:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT / 16:00 BST / 17:00 CEST

Live30 webinars are thirty-minute presentations designed to update you on the latest innovations, applications, and data in a fast yet interactive format.

Natural killer (NK) cells play a critical role in the body's immune system. Their unique ability to identify and destroy abnormal cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed, make them a promising treatment option for various cancers and infectious diseases. NK and CAR-NK cells represent an attractive alternate modality with the potential to address shortcomings experienced by T cell and CAR-T-based therapies. NK cell therapies also offer impressive feasibility as an off-the-shelf product, an enhanced safety profile with respect to cytokine release syndrome, neurotoxicity, and graft-versus-host disease, and renewed promise where T cells have fallen short in the solid tumor setting.

As a dedicated cell and gene therapy CDMO, OmniaBio is at the forefront of manufacturing innovation, providing robust technology platforms to propel the industry’s advancement. In the upcoming webinar, we will explore the challenges and opportunities of NK cell therapy development, complemented by a captivating case study highlighting our NK cell therapy platform. The case study will provide valuable insights supported by relevant data for NK cell expansion, NK cell transduction efficiency optimization enabling genetic customization, scale-up to clinically relevant quantities, and key NK analytics and functional assays.

Jane Lebkowski

President, Research & Development at Regenerative Patch Technologies LLC

Jane Lebkowski has been actively involved in the development of cell and gene therapies since 1986 and is President of Regenerative Patch Technologies (RPT), a biotechnology firm developing composite stem cell-based implants targeting restoration of retinal architecture and function in patients with macular degeneration. In this role, Dr Lebkowski oversees all of RPT’s operations. From 2013–2017, Jane Lebkowski also served as Chief Scientific Officer and President of R&D at Asterias Biotherapeutics Inc, where she headed all preclinical, product, regulatory, and clinical development of Asterias’ regenerative medicine and dendritic cell based-cancer immunotherapy products. Prior to joining Asterias, Dr Lebkowski was Senior Vice President of Regenerative Medicine and Chief Scientific Officer at Geron Corporation. Dr Lebkowski led Geron’s human embryonic stem cell program from 1998–2012 and was responsible for all research, preclinical development, product development, manufacturing, and clinical development activities supporting cell-based therapies for several regenerative medicine indications including spinal cord injury and cardiovascular disease. From 1986–1998, Dr Lebkowski was Vice President of Research and Development at Applied Immune Sciences where she directed activities to develop T cell based cancer immunotherapies for solid tumors, hematologic malignancies and AIDs. Following the acquisition of Applied Immune Sciences by Rhone Poulenc Rorer (RPR, currently Sanofi), Dr Lebkowski remained at RPR as Vice President of Discovery Research. During Dr Lebkowski’s tenure at RPR, she coordinated preclinical investigations of gene therapy approaches for treatment of cancer, cardiovascular disease and nervous system disorders, and directed vector formulations and delivery development. Dr Lebkowski received her PhD in Biochemistry from Princeton University in 1982, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Genetics, Stanford University in 1986. Dr Lebkowski has published over 80 peer reviewed publications and has 19 issued US patents. Dr Lebkowski has served on the board of Directors of the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy and the International Society Stem Cell Research along with numerous scientific advisory boards and professional committees.