Description:

From Target Discovery to a Gene Edited Cell Therapy Product

Adoptive cell therapy with ex vivo expanded tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) offers a potentially curative treatment for cancer and is the only cell therapy modality with reported durable responses in solid tumors to-date. However, the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) limits the effectiveness of TIL therapy. To address this medical need, we used our Immune-CRISPRomicsTM Platform to perform a series of genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screens to identify targets enhancing the ability of T cells to infiltrate and kill solid tumors in an in vivo setting. Based on these findings, we developed KSQ-001, an engineered TIL (eTILTM) therapy created via CRISPR/Cas9-mediated editing of SOCS1, a top target found to restrain T cell anti-tumor immunity in the TME.This seminar will discuss the development of KSQ-001, from the initial target-identification screens to the application of gene editing to TIL therapy.

Dr. Karrie Wong is currently Senior Director, Head of Cell Therapy at KSQ Therapeutics. Dr. Wong started her career in the industry in the Department of Exploratory Immuno-Oncology at Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research (NIBR), where she conducted led research on multiple IO drug discovery programs across different modalities. Dr. Wong holds a PhD in Immunology/Regenerative Medicine from the University of Toronto and completed her postdoctoral training at Dana Farber Cancer Institute on cancer vaccine research.