Greetings,
I would like to inform you that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) will hold a virtual workshop on “In Vivo Engineering of Immune Cells for Cancer Immunotherapy” (https://events.cancer.gov/nci/iveic-cancerimmunotherapy) on January 28-29, 2025. This workshop is open to the public and free to attend, although registration is required to access the event virtually. Please consider encouraging the biomedical scientists to benefit from attending this workshop. The workshop Overview is copied below:
*******************************************
Overview
The “In Vivo Engineering of Immune Cells for Cancer Immunotherapy” virtual workshop will be held on January 28 and 29, 2025. This meeting is open to the public and free to attend, but registration is required to access the event virtually.
Adoptive cellular therapies (ACT) for cancer involve complex and laborious processes, including leukapheresis, ex vivo manipulation and expansion of immune cells, and GMP cell manufacturing and production, which hampers the clinical accessibility. In contrast, the in vivo engineering of immune cells (IVEIC) approaches bypass the tedious, complex and costly process of ex vivo immune cell production by reprogramming specific immune cells in situ, thus offering a true off-the-shelf cancer immunotherapy. The IVEIC approach takes advantage of advances in in vivo gene delivery technologies using viral vectors or non-viral nanocarrier-based vehicles to deliver genetic materials of interest to immune cells, and in gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 and base-editing systems for precision gene modifications in immune cells. We envision a parallel development of in vivo cellular immunotherapies along with ACT to allow faster and broader access for patients with both hematologic and solid tumors.
*********************************************
Thank you.
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season,
Minkyung Song
Minkyung (Min) H. Song, Ph.D.
Program Director, Clinical Grants and Contracts Branch
Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program
Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis
National Cancer Institute, NIH
9609 Medical Center Drive
Room 5-W564, MSC 9739
Rockville, MD 20850
Phone: 240-276-6139
E-mail: songm@mail.nih.gov
