Dr. Julio Delgado is the Head of the Oncoimmunotherapy Unit and consultant haematologist at Hospital Clínic, Barcelona (HCB), researcher at IDIBAPS Biomedical Research Institute, and associate professor at the University of Barcelona. He has been involved in the clinical development of ARI-0001 (varnimcabtagene autoleucel), the first 100% academic CART-cell product ever approved in an EU member state. He is a founding member of the Spanish Group for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) and runs most CLL and CART-cell clinical trials at HCB. He is a core member of the EMA’s Scientific Advisory Group for Oncology, and advisor to the Spanish Medicines Agency and the Catalan Pharmacotherapy Committee. He is a member of HCB’s Advanced Therapies Committee and vice-president of the Institution’s Review Board/Ethics Committee. He is a past member of the EHA’s Education Committee and current member of the EHA’s European Affairs Committee. He is also the EHA’s representative at EMA’s health-care professionals working party (HCPWP). He has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers.

Professor Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen, Aarhus University, Dept of Biomedicine is a distinguished immunologist whose research has contributed to the fields of cancer immunology, innate immune regulation, and adaptive cell therapies. With a career spanning over two decades, Prof Jakobsen has established a reputation as a leading expert in understanding and manipulating the immune system to combat cancer.

Professor Jakobsen’s early research focused on the intricate mechanisms of innate immune regulation controlled by the cGAS-STING DNA sensing pathway. Building on his expertise in STING biology, Prof. Jakobsen has made significant contributions to the field of cancer immunology. His studies have explored the complex interactions between tumor cells and the STING pathway and furthermore, have led to the identification of novel STING-related targets.

One of Prof Jakobsen’s notable achievements is his work in adaptive cell therapies, which was initiated in 2013 when he began to study Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells (pDCs). His pioneering work elucidated how to develop pDCs from hemopoietic stem cells and studying their critical function in antiviral responses. This later provided a crucial foundation for developing novel immunotherapeutic strategies aimed at harnessing the pDC innate defense mechanisms to fight cancer. Recognizing the potential of engineered immune cells to specifically target and destroy cancer cells, he and his colleagues has been at the forefront of developing cutting-edge approaches for precision targeting pDCs to fight cancer.

Throughout his career, Prof. Jakobsen has published extensively in leading scientific journals, and has received numerous awards for his scientific contributions. He leads a large dynamic research team at Aarhus University, and in parallel runs multiple collaborations with industry and clinical partners. The overall goals are to advance our understanding of immune mechanisms in cancer, and to bring innovative therapeutic strategies to cancer patients worldwide.

Professor Martin R Jakobsen continues to push the boundaries of immunological research, driven by a profound commitment to uncovering the mysteries of the immune system and translating these findings into life-saving treatments for cancer patients.

Dr. Natasha Kekre has been appointed to the Department of Medicine in the Division of Hematology, within the Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program at The Ottawa Hospital, effective October 2015. She is also an associate scientist within the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa. She completed her Bachelor’s in Science at the University of Windsor then obtained her medical degree from the University of Ottawa. She then trained at the University of Ottawa in Internal Medicine and Hematology. She went on to do a fellowship in stem cell transplantation at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA with a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University.

Her research is focused on developing early phase clinical trials and moving home grown therapeutic strategies into patients. She collaborates with a number of local investigators and scientists in Ottawa, studying hematologic malignancies and blood and marrow transplant recipients more specifically. She collaborates with scientists and physicians across Canada to build a Canadian CAR-T cell platform (chimeric antigen receptor T cells are immune cells engineered to kill cancer cells), bringing this exciting new therapy to Canadian patients. Her other clinical research interests include improving transplant related outcomes and projects with an epidemiologic focus, including but not limited to decision modeling and meta-analyses.

She also participates with a number of cooperative groups in North America including the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research, the Canadian Blood and Marrow Transplant Group, the American Society of Hematology and the American Society for Transplant and Cellular Therapy.

Christopher A. Klebanoff, M.D. Associate Member and Attending Physician, Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program and Center for Cell Engineering, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Member investigator, The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Dr. Klebanoff is cellular immunologist and medical oncologist with over 20 years of experience in the pre-clinical and early stage clinical development of T cell-based immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. Prior to joining Memorial Sloan Kettering and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in 2016, he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholar and Assistant Clinical Investigator at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Dr. Klebanoff pioneered the paradigm that T cell subsets with the memory-like attributes of self-renewal and multipotency are a critical determinant for adoptive immunotherapy efficacy. Further, he resolved how host lymphodepletion – a standard practice for nearly all cellular immunotherapies – enhances the potency of adoptively transferred T cells through the removal of homeostatic cytokine “sinks.” The Klebanoff laboratory is currently focused on the discovery and immunologic targeting of shared neoantigens resulting from recurrently mutated driver genes using TCR gene therapy. 

Dr. Klebanoff is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and a scientific co-founder of Affini-T Therapeutics. He has received several prestigious awards, including an HHMI Research Scholar Continuing Support Award, the Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award, and a National Institutes of Health MERIT Award.

Dr. Paul Maciocia is a clinician scientist and consultant haematologist at University College London, UK. His academic and clinical practice is centred around chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. He undertook his PhD and postgraduate research in the laboratory of Dr Martin Pule at UCL and now runs a research group with interests in CAR-T for T cell cancers, allogeneic ‘off the shelf’ CAR-T and synthetic biology approaches to improve CAR-T efficacy. His work has directly led to 3 clinical trials of novel CAR-T and he is an inventor on several patents related to CAR-T and immunotherapy of T cell malignancies.

Professor Karl-Johan Malmberg, M.D. Ph.D is a Specialist in Hematology with over 25 years of experience in NK cell research and Cancer Immunotherapy. He is the Director of a new Center of Excellence, The Precision Immunotherapy Alliance (PRIMA) at the University of Oslo (UiO) and leads an international team of 20 scientists with laboratories at the UiO/OUH and Karolinska Institutet. The focus of the Malmberg Laboratory is to decipher fundamental mechanisms regulating the functional diversification of human NK cells and implement this knowledge in novel cell therapies against cancer.

Søren Lykke Petersen, MD, D.Msc. is a consultant at Department of Hematology at Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet. He is a specialist in Hematology and has since 2013 been a member of the allogeneic stem cell transplantation team, and since 2019 the leader of the adult CAR-T cell program at Department of Hematology, Rigshospitalet. He is responsible for high dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation in patients with autoimmune diseases. He is a member of the Clinical Academic Group in Cancer Immunotherapy, Copenhagen Health Sciences Partners and is chairman of the Danish CAR-T cell Network, Danish Comprehensive Cancer Center. His primary scientific focus has been on how alloreactivity can be utilized in the treatment of hematologic malignancies. Søren Lykke Petersen is an investigator in clinical trials with CAR-T cells and in trials of both allogeneic- and autologous stem cell transplantation. 

Inge Marie Svane, MD, PhD is Professor in Clinical Cancer Immune Therapy at the University of Copenhagen, Director of National Center for Cancer Immune Therapy (CCIT-DK), Herlev and Gentofte Hospital, and Chief Physician specialized in melanoma at the Department of Oncology at Copenhagen University Hospital, Herlev, Denmark. She is also head of the PhD educational program in Clinical Cancer Research at Copenhagen University and head of the Clinical Academic Group in Cancer Immunotherapy, Copenhagen Health Sciences Partners.

Inge Marie Svane has more than 25 years of research experience in cancer immunology and immunotherapy and holds a PhD in basic cancer immunology. She has pioneered the field of cancer immunotherapy in Denmark, building up CCIT-DK, a translational research center in a leading European position. Her focus of expertise is T-cell based adoptive cell therapy and other cellular therapies, cancer vaccines, and immune regulation. CCIT-DK comprise a clean room (GMP) facility headed by Inge Marie Svane enabling manufacturing of in-house clinical grad immunotherapeutic products.

Since 2001 she has initiated more than 20 phase I, II, and III immunotherapeutic trials as academic sponsor. Further, she is national principal investigator on numerous international clinical trials in collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry, primarily within the area of immunotherapy.

Inge Marie Svane is co-founder of IO Biotech, a spinout biotech company from Herlev and Gentofte Hospital and the Capital Region of Denmark aiming to develop immune modulating vaccines for cancer therapy.

Inge Marie Svane has an extensive cooperative network with scientists and clinicians nationally and internationally and is a frequent speaker at national and international meetings, courses, and conferences.

Inge Marie Svane is key opinion leader on cancer immunotherapy, acknowledging the importance of communication to the public, patient associations, and politicians. She actively supports the European cancer patient coalition as scientific committee member in the Immuno-Oncology Academy. She is member of the scientific committee and faculty on Immunotherapy in the European Society for Medical Oncology, ESMO. Further, she is initiator of a national, scientific network, IMMUNONET, member of the European melanoma group, EORTC, and steering group member of the Danish Melanoma Group heading national treatment guidelines and real-world patient registries.

Inge Marie Svane is co-author of more than 300 scientific publications, including senior author on more than 85 papers in NEJM, Lancet Oncol, Nature Med, Cancer Res, J Immunother Cancer, Br J Cancer, Clin Cancer Res, Oncoimmunology, Eur J Cancer, Cancer Immunol Immunother, Front Immunol, Cancer Immunol Res, and Blood a.o.

Dr Maria Themeli studied Medicine in the University of Patras, Greece. She performed her PhD at the Bone Marrow Transplantation laboratory in the University of Patras Medical School studying the long-term biological consequences of GvHD in epithelial tissues after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation. After completing her PhD training Dr Themeli joined the lab of Dr Michel Sadelain at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. There she trained in the design and development of chimeric antigen receptor-engineered T cells (CAR T) and reported for the first time the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) as an off-the-shelf source of therapeutic CAR T cells. In 2015 Dr Themeli received a Re-allocation Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship and joined the department of Hematology at Amsterdam UMC-location VUmc, where in 2017 she became Assistant Professor. Dr Themeli has received several prestigious fellowships and awards such as: Clinical Scholars in Biomedical Research Fellowship at MSKCC, NYSCF Druckenmiller fellowship, ASH/EHA TRTH Career development award, Marie Curie individual fellowship, Innovation award from Argo-the Brussels Hellenic Network and the EHA-EBMT 1^st Emerging Investigators award in the field of cell therapy and immunotherapy. Her research interest has been focused on improving cancer immunotherapy with CAR T cells by providing solutions to two important aspects: the broadening of its applicability for more patients and diseases and the improvement of its safety and effectiveness. Towards these goals dr Themeli’s group works on: 1. the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) as an off-the-shelf source of therapeutic CAR T cells and 2. The development of novel CAR designs and therapeutic combinations.