2008 Eighth Annual Beckman Scholars Symposium
Friday Concurrent Session Speaker

Michael Jensen, M.D.
Associate Chair,
Division of Cancer Immunotherapeutics & Tumor Immunology
Beckman Research Institute
City of Hope National Medical Center

Targeting Cancer With Genetically Engineered T-Cells: A Story in Translation
Recent conceptual as well as technological advances in the areas of molecular immunobiology, gene transfer, and cell processing have fostered increasingly sophisticated translational applications of cellular therapies for oncologic disease employing genetically-modified T-lymphocytes. My laboratory’s work focus’ on T-cell genetic modification for re-directing antigen specificity to tumors utilizing recent advances not only in the composition and specificity of receptor antigen recognition domains, but also the evolution of multifunctional cytoplasmic signaling domains developed for these chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) that provide dual activation and co-stimulatory signaling. We are investigating the context of adoptive transfer with respect to the conditioning of the recipient for enhanced T-cell engraftment and expansion, the grafting of CARs on to T-cells having endogenous TCR specificities for viral epitopes to which the host has robust immunity, and, the provision of novel homing and tumor microenvironment survival capabilities will also be discussed. The backlog in clinical deployment of these technologies is now being rectified by the implementation of an increasing number of early phase cellular immunotherapy clinical trials at the City of Hope employing our FDA-licensed GMP-compliant biologics manufacturing facility. The next decade of advances in this arena will depend on iterative bench-to-bedside back-to-the-bench translational studies capable of sustaining the evolution of these technologies in the context of clinical parameters relevant to the oncology patient population. 

Dr. Michael Jensen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine then completed training in Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at the University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. His laboratory work began under the mentorship of Dr. Philip Greenberg, Program Head in Immunology, FHCRC and focused on the immunobiology of tumor-specific T-cells. Following completion of his fellowship, Dr. Jensen joined the faculty at the City of Hope National Medical Center where he built a translational research program integrating gene therapy and cellular immunotherapy for cancer. This program has grown into the Division of Cancer Immunotherapeutics & Tumor Immunology that has a strong emphasis on bench-to-bedside translational research. Currently Dr. Jensen holds four FDA-authorized Investigational New Drug Applications covering first-in-human applications of adoptive transfer of genetically engineered T-cells having re-directed tumor specificity for lymphoma, neuroblastoma, and malignant gliomas.