Experience from King’s College London
Cellular therapy promises dramatic advances in oncology, harnessing the immune system itself to fight cancer. And although CAR T-cell therapy has seen most of its success in blood cancers, there is progress and promise on the solid tumour front as well.
In this exclusive webinar, cutting-edge researchers from the Cancer Centre at King’s College London—Dr. Sophie Papa and Reuben Benjamin—share their most recent experiences reprogramming T cells with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to tackle both hematologic and solid tumors.
They will conclude with a Question & Answer session, moderated by Clare Sarvary Fourrier, Precision for Medicine.
Presented by
Dr. Sophie Papa ,
FRCP PhD
Sophie Papa is a Clinical Reader in Immune-oncology and Consultant Medical Oncologist at King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT). Sophie undertook her medical training at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. She completed a PhD in solid tumour CAR T-cell cancer immunotherapy from King’s College London in 2011. She is a clinical academic with research interests in the field of immune-oncology.
Her group have two areas of study: Firstly, strategies to expedite CAR T-cell clinical translation through enhancing cellular survival in the tumour microenvironment and through clinically useful cell imaging development and secondly, cohort based investigation of mechanism of checkpoint inhibitor driven inflammatory disease.
Sophie is a medical oncologist with a practice in malignant melanoma and Merkle cell carcinoma. As a principal investigator in the GSTT Early Phase Trials Team Sophie has expertise in the design and delivery of first in man studies. She has a particular focus on building skills and capabilities to deliver immune effector cell therapies for solid tumours. She is the program lead for cellular therapies, lead for skin cancer research and chairs the biological safety committee.
Dr. Reuben Benjamin,
Consultant Hematologist
Reuben Benjamin is a Consultant Hematologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer with an interest in multiple myeloma, stem cell transplantation and cell therapy.
He completed his hematology training at University College Hospital, London and then worked as a post doctorate research fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NY undertaking translational research in CAR-T cell therapy for leukemia and myeloma.
Since 2014 he has been based at King's College Hospital, London where he leads the plasma cell disorder service and CAR-T cell program. He is Chief Investigator of the CALM Trial, the first allogeneic off-the-shelf CAR-T cell study for relapsed adult B-ALL and is also actively involved in offering CAR-T cell therapy for myeloma and lymphoma.
He has an active research group at King’s College London focusing on allogeneic CAR-T cells for lymphoid malignancies as well as in studying the biology of extramedullary myeloma.