The 5th Cell Therapies and Immunotherapy Conference, organized by AIChE’s Society for Biological Engineering (SBE), will be held October 28–30, 2024 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego in San Diego, CA. Renowned experts and thought leaders from clinical, industrial, and academic settings will discuss the latest developments in these fields and address challenges and discoveries in cell therapy and immunotherapy.
We spoke with Yuta Lee, Founder & CEO of Accelerated Biosciences, to discuss the inspiration behind his research, what he’ll be sharing at the conference, and how new findings in cell therapies and immunotherapy can solve some of the challenges facing engineering and society today.
What inspired you to do research in the field of cell therapies?
My father, Professor Jan-nan Lee MD, PhD, discovered the human trophoblast stem cell (hTSC) in 2003, the earliest stem cells that can be sourced without ethical issues. We quickly discovered that hTSC had the holy grail characteristics of scale and immune privilege. This source would solve many challenges in cell therapy today and accelerate therapies to the market.
How do you envision your field of research solving some of the challenges in society?
In order to create cell therapies to address the incredibly large unmet need of patients, we need to first resolve the biggest challenge: finding the right starting cell source. Cell therapy developers face ethics, inconsistent cell sources, the choice between scalability and immunogenicity, and unclear freedom to operate, as well as incomplete CMC documentation. We have taken care of all of these issues. (1) Our hTSCs are sourced form the pre-placental tissue of an ectopic pregnancy and therefore do not have any ethical issues; (2) Ectopic pregnancies have a 2% prevalence of pregnancies worldwide; (3) We have optimized the scale of hTSCs to 85 population doublings, and the cells express HLA-G for immune privilege; lastly, (4) We have over 100 patents with 54 granted and have taken our first hTSC line to GMP. We really do have a perfect product-market fit.
Are there any new developments, technologies, or applications of technologies in cell therapies and immunotherapy that you are particularly excited about?
We are particularly excited about the use of exosomes. Collaborating with the National Institute on Aging (NIH), we have successfully applied our hTSC-exosomes to cell senescence in vitro and in vivo to down regulate senescence associated secretory phenotypes (SASPs) — pro-inflammatory proteins that are associated with many aging-related diseases today from Alzheimer’s to arthritis.
What are you hoping the audience takes away from this conference and your presentation?
I hope to collaborate with all cell and gene therapy developers in the audience in order to create multiple shots on goal. We all need to work together to accelerate therapies to market.
Learn more about the 5th Cell Therapies and Immunotherapy Conference.
Group Registration Discount: A discount of 15% is available for groups of five or more regular participants of the same affiliation (e.g., universities, research institutes, or companies); it does not apply to students. Email aibhl@aiche.org for more information.
Conference Grants Available: Funding is available to help sponsor some registrations and travel costs for the Cell Therapies 2024 conference. Students, post-docs, and early-career professionals are encouraged to apply. Apply today.
About SBE
Established in 2004, the Society for Biological Engineering is a technological community for engineers and applied scientists integrating biology with engineering. Members of SBE come from a broad spectrum of industries and disciplines and share in SBE’s mission of realizing the benefits of bioprocessing, biomedical, and biomolecular applications. Learn more about SBE.