Christine Allen

Professor, University of Toronto

Dr. Christine Allen is a full Professor at the University of Toronto and global leader in drug formulation and development with more than 170 publications. She has received numerous career awards and is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, Controlled Release Society, and the Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences. She has held senior leadership roles including President of CRS (2022-2023), President of CSPS (2020 – 2022), Vice-President Ecosystem Development at adMare Bioinnovations (2022 – 2023), Associate Vice-President and Vice Provost Strategic Initiatives at UofT (2019 – 2022) and Interim Dean, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy (2018 – 2019). She is the co-founder and CEO of a start-up that is transforming pharmaceutical drug development through integration of AI, automation and advanced computing. Christine is dedicated to promoting and actioning equity, diversity, and inclusion in research and innovation.

Nicholas Arpaia

Assistant Professor of Microbiology & Immunology
Columbia University Irving Medical Center'

Dr. Arpaia received a B.S. in Biochemistry from the State University of New York, Geneseo in 2006 and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology (Immunology and Pathogenesis) from the University of California, Berkeley in 2011. His graduate work with Dr. Gregory M. Barton examined interactions between Salmonella typhimurium and the innate immune system and demonstrated that Toll-like receptor–sensing of S. typhimurium promotes pathogen virulence and immune evasion. As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Alexander Y. Rudensky at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Arpaia investigated how tissue-resident leukocytes sense changes in their local environment and identified environmental signals that drive the differentiation and specialization of regulatory T (Treg) cell subsets. He began his independent laboratory as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in 2016, where his research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that drive pro- vs. anti-inflammatory immune responses in mucosal barrier tissues and the tumor microenvironment. Dr. Arpaia serves as Associate Director of the Integrated Doctoral Program in Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Sciences and Faculty Director of the Microbiology & Immunology Shared Resources Core. He was named a Searle Scholar in 2017 and received the Harold and Golden Lamport Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research in 2021. Find the Arpaia Lab on Twitter (@arpaialab), and at www.arpaialab.nyc.

Rebecca Auer

Scientific Director, Cancer Therapeutics Program, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Surgical Oncologist, The Ottawa Hospital
Professor, Departments of Surgery and BioChemistry, Microbiology & Immunology, University of Ottawa

Dr. Auer holds a Tier 1 Clinical Research Chair in Perioperative Cancer Therapeutics and leads a translational research program focused on understanding the promotion of metastatic disease in the perioperative period, following surgical stress. She had defined a mediating role for Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells and effector Natural Killer and T cells in the cancer recurrence and the development of postoperative metastases. Using surgically relevant preclinical animal models, Dr. Auer has identified candidate immunotherapies capable of counteracting the effects of surgery. Dr. Auer has led six translational clinical trials of perioperative cancer therapies based on this preclinical research. She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and received over $23 million dollars in peer-reviewed funding to support her work.

Melinda Bachini

13-year survivor of cholangiocarcinoma
Director of Patient Services for the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation

Melinda Bachini is a 13-year survivor of cholangiocarcinoma. In 2012 she was treated at the National Cancer Institute by Dr. Steven Rosenberg in a clinical trial using Adoptive Cell Therapy with TIL. Due to an exceptional and breakthrough response to this treatment, her story was published in the New York Times and other media.

Melinda is married, the mother of six children, and the grandmother to two. She is passionate about patient advocacy. Her experience with previous and current treatments allows great insight into patients participating in clinical trials. Her position as Director of Patient Services for the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation allows Melinda to interact, support, and educate others touched by this cancer. She shares her story with as many cancer patients as possible in hopes of giving courage to those in need.

Melinda had previously volunteered with the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation for seven years and came on as staff in August 2017. She also worked as an EMT Paramedic for over 15 years in the Emergency Medical Field.

Melinda served as a patient advocate for the NCI Hepatobiliary Task Force from April 2016 through December 2022, the NCI Patient Advocate Steering Committee (PASC), the ECOG-ACRIN GI Committee, the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Advocacy Committee, the NCI Council of Research Advocates, and the NCCN Hepatobiliary Guideline Panel. Melinda attended the 2016, 2017, and 2018 NCCS CPAT Symposium and advocated on Capitol Hill. She participated as a panelist in the Cancer Moonshot – Community Oncology Event at the White House, told her personal story and was introduced by her state Senator for the Innovation and Access in Quality Cancer Care at the US Capitol. In June 2017, she spoke with nine US Senators at NIH to share her personal story of how research has prolonged her life. Melinda has served as a Consumer Reviewer for the Department of Defense for several years.

Vinod Balachandran

Attending Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgeon, Department of Surgery,
and lab head, Immuno-Oncology Service of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP)
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Vinod P. Balachandran, MD, completed his undergraduate work in Physics at Cornell University, his MD at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and both his post-doctoral tumor immunology and clinical surgical oncology training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). In 2015, Dr. Balachandran joined MSK as faculty, where he is currently a lab head in the Immuno-Oncology Service of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP), Attending Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgeon in the Department of Surgery, and Member of the Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research. His clinical and laboratory focus is to discover new immunotherapies for pancreatic cancer. His approach is to study a highly rare subgroup of pancreatic cancer patients that, remarkably, survive long-term. His aim is to discover the underlying immunological principles at play in these patients, and to translate these principles into new clinical immunotherapies. Spurred by findings in long-term survivors, his group recently spearheaded the discovery and first clinical application of personalized mRNA vaccines for pancreatic cancer.

For his work, Dr. Balachandran has received the Louise and Allston Boyer Young Investigator Award for Cancer Research, the Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators, a Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award, a National Cancer Institute Cancer Moonshot Award, and a Stand Up to Cancer Phillip A. Sharp Innovation Award.

Enzo Baracuhy

Master’s Student, McMaster University

Enzo completed his BSc at the University of Guelph in Biomedical Sciences and is now an MSc student in Dr. Karen Mossman’s lab at McMaster University. During his undergraduate thesis, he worked in a lab researching gene and cell therapy where he developed a keen interest in engineering viruses to treat diseases. Enzo received multiple summer research program awards during his undergrad, including the CIBC Summer Research Assistantship, NSERC Summer Student Research Award, and leading up to his MSc, the BioCanRX Summer Student Internship. His thesis investigates the role of virus replication in bovine herpesvirus immunotherapy.

Rebecca Burchett

PhD Student, McMaster University

Rebecca is currently a PhD candidate in Dr. Jonathan Bramson’s laboratory at McMaster University. She completed her BSc in Honours Cell Biology and an undergraduate thesis in the Department of Oncology at the University of Alberta. Rebecca’s PhD research is focused on developing and characterizing a novel combination immunotherapy approach that uses oncolytic cancer vaccines and chimeric antigen receptors to boost adoptive T cell therapies. She was funded throughout her graduate studies by CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarships Master’s and Doctoral awards. Outside of her research, Rebecca leads community outreach initiatives with Let’s Talk Science and Science FUNdamentals in hopes of inspiring the next generation of scientists and cancer researchers.

Pieter Cullis

Director, Nanomedicines Research Group
Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of British Columbia

Pieter R. Cullis, PhD, FRSC, FNAI (USA), OC, Director, Nanomedicines Research Group, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of British Columbia. Dr. Cullis and co-workers have been responsible for fundamental advances in the development of nanomedicines employing lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology for cancer therapies, gene therapies and vaccines. This work has contributed to five drugs that have received clinical approval by the FDA, the European EMA and Health Canada. Dr. Cullis has also co-founded eleven biotechnology companies that now employ over 400 people, has published over 350 scientific articles (h index 133) and is an inventor on over 100 patents. He has also co-founded and been Founding Scientific Director of two National Centre of Excellence networks, the Centre for Drug Research and Development (now AdMare) in 2004 and the NanoMedicines Innovation Network in 2019. These not-for-profit networks are aimed at translating basic research in the life sciences into commercially viable products and have given rise to numerous start-up companies. Dr. Cullis has received many awards including the Order of Canada in 2021 and the VinFuture Prize (Vietnam), the Prince Mahidol Award (Thailand), the Gairdner International Award (Canada) and the Tang Prize (Taiwan) in 2022. Two recently approved drugs that are enabled by LNP delivery systems devised by Dr. Cullis, members of his UBC laboratory and colleagues in the companies he has co-founded deserve special emphasis. The first is Onpattro which was approved by the US FDA in August 2018 to treat the previously fatal hereditary condition transthyretin-induced amyloidosis (hATTR). Onpattro is the first RNAi drug to receive regulatory approval. The second is Comirnaty, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech that has received regulatory approval in many jurisdictions including Canada, the USA, the UK and Europe. Comirnaty is playing a major role in containing the global Covid-19 pandemic with approximately 6B doses administered worldwide in 2021 and 2022.

Tyler Dyer

Research Associate, BC Cancer

Tyler has been described as an integral member of BC Cancer’s Conconi Family Immunotherapy Lab (CFIL) at the Deeley Research Centre (DRC), where he manufactures cutting-edge clinical-grade CAR-T therapies for Canadians. Led by Dr. Julie Nielsen, CFIL is the first lab in Canada to produce clinical CD19 CAR-T cells, collaborating with researchers and doctors across the country to make CAR-T therapies more accessible to Canadians. CFIL's strategy involves quick vein-to-vein manufacturing with no cryopreservation and has treated 70 patients and counting. Tyler and team are optimizing processes within a GMP framework and are designing and qualifying new assays to meet the rapidly evolving regulatory requirements for Immunotherapies.

When Tyler is not busy manufacturing CARs, he can often be found conducting flow cytometry experiments or skillfully troubleshooting equipment. His expertise in these areas made him the obvious choice when the Flow Core Manager position became available at the DRC. Beyond his dedication to the lab, Tyler has diverse interests; he enjoys playing overly complicated board games, takes pride in crafting self-described decent bagels from scratch, and loves teaching his bunny new tricks whenever he gets the chance to step away from the lab.

Aled Edwards

Chief Executive, Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC)
Professor, University of Toronto
Adjunct Professor at McGill University

Dr. Aled Edwards is founder and Chief Executive of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), an open science public-private partnership that generates research tools for human proteins, including chemical probes. The ~100 SGC-invented chemical probes have been cited over 12,000 times and therapeutic hypotheses generated with these chemical probes are now being tested in over 80 clinical trials world-wide. Al is a Professor at the University of Toronto and Adjunct Professor at McGill University. He trained at McGill and Stanford Universities.

Emma Gerber

PhD Candidate, The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute

Emma is a PhD candidate at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and is supervised by Dr. Benjamin K. Tsang and Dr. Dylan Burger. Her work aims to investigate how small extracellular vesicles mediate chemoresistance and disease progression in ovarian cancer. She coordinates a biobank in the Tsang Lab that collects clinical samples from ovarian cancer patients at The Ottawa Hospital, allowing her to study candidate biomarkers. Emma is inspired by work in collaboration with ovarian cancer patient partners and hopes to inspire the next generation of cancer researchers through community outreach with elementary and high school students.

John Haanen

Scientific Group Leader
Division of Molecular Oncology and Immunology, CSO Immunotherapy
Director of the Center for Cellular Therapy, Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI)

John Haanen is consultant medical oncologist, scientific group leader at the Division of Molecular Oncology and Immunology, CSO Immunotherapy and Director of the Center for Cellular Therapy at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Since 2008 he is endowed professor of Translational Immunotherapy of Cancer at Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands. As of April 1, 2023, he is Head of Melanoma Clinic at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne Switzerland (one day a week). From 2009 till 2018 he headed the Division of Medical Oncology at NKI. His current research spreads over development of cellular therapies for solid tumors, neoadjuvant immunotherapies (renal cell cancer, involvement in GI cancers and head and neck cancers), and biomarker research. His clinical specialty is in melanoma and other skin cancers, kidney cancer and management of immune-related adverse events. He co-authored over 500 peer-reviewed articles, is currently Editor-in-Chief of ESMO IOTECH. John Haanen was scientific co-chair of ESMO IO Symposium/Congress from 2016-2019, and Scientific Chair of the ESMO 2020 Congress. Since 2018 he is member of the Central Committee for Research involving Human Subjects (CCMO).

Elie Haddad

Professor of Pediatrics
Université de Montréal

Dr. Elie Haddad Elie Haddad is a clinician scientist in pediatric immunology, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal. His clinical research focuses on primary immune deficiency. He is President of the Clinical Immunology Society and he is one of the three PI of the Primary Immune Deficiency Treatment Consortium, an NIH-funded consortium of 47 North-American Centers. The major activity of his fundamental research is on immunotherapy, mostly in the field of NK-cell and stem-cell-based cellular therapy. Dr. Haddad has also set up a humanized mice platform to develop innovative preclinical models of cancer immunotherapy and the study of immunopathology.

Darrell Irvine

Professor, Departments of Biological Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Darrell Irvine, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He also serves on the steering committee of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. His research is focused on the application of engineering tools to problems in cellular immunology and the development of new materials for vaccine and drug delivery. Major efforts of the laboratory are directed toward vaccine development for HIV and cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Irvine’s work has been recognized by numerous awards, including election as a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, election as a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and appointment as an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is the author of over 200 publications, reviews, and book chapters and an inventor on numerous patents.

Inge Jedema

Head of Translational Cellular Therapy
Netherlands Cancer Institute/Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital
Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Dr. Inge Jedema worked between 1997 and 2020 at the Department of Hematology of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in the Netherlands. Together with Prof. Fred Falkenburg she started the Laboratory for Translational Hematology. She was responsible for the development and implementation of cellular immunotherapy strategies and the application of ATMPs in clinical trials. This work included the application of virus-specific T cells, leukemia-reactive T cells and (TCR-modified) T cells targeting minor histocompatibility antigens in the context of allogeneic stem cell transplantation for patients with hematological malignancies. In 2007 she was appointed assistant Professor and in 2015 she was appointed Associate Professor. Since June 2020 she started in the position as Head of Translational Cellular Therapy at the Netherlands Cancer Institute/Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In this position she is responsible for the development and implementation of cellular immunotherapy strategies in the field of solid oncology in the group of Prof. John Haanen. They recently finished an international, placebo-controlled, phase III clinical trial that showed improved progression-free survival in metastasized melanoma patients after treatment with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) compared to standard immune checkpoint inhibition therapy. TIL therapy is now reimbursed in the Netherlands and available under hospital exemption for this patient group. They are now working towards marketing authorization of the TIL product for patients with metastasized melanoma failing first-line immune checkpoint inhibition therapy.

Manel Juan

Assistant professor, School of Medicine, University de Barcelonas
Head of the Service of Immunology, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and responsible for the Immunotherapy Platform, Hospital Sant Joan de Deu

Dr. Manel Juan is the head of the Service of Immunology (SI) at "Hospital Clínic de Barcelona" (HCB) for adults and responsible for the Immunotherapy Platform at the pediatric "Hospital Sant Joan de Deu Scientific" (HSJD), and leader in "Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer" (IDIBAPS) of the group Immunogenetics and Immunotherapy of Immune and Autoinflammatory Responses. He is an Immunologist, specializing in Cell and Gene Immunotherapy, and assistant professor in the School of Medicine at University de Barcelona (UB).

Dr. Juan completed his MD and PhD at the University of Barcelona. He finished his residency in Immunology at HCB. From 1996 to 2007 he worked as an immunologist at Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol and as head of subprocess at BST (Catalonian Blood and Tissue Bank), as an assistant professor at Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). In 2007, he returned to HCB as a head of a section in the SI, becoming in 2020 (until now) head of SI of HCB and assistant professor of UB.

Dr. Juan leads a translation program focused on Cell and Gene Immunotherapy, mainly in adoptive cell immunotherapy (ACT), and specially in CAR-T production. Next to several proposals for vaccination with monocyte-derived Dendritic Cells and Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TILs) as ACT, the more relevant products developed under his direction are a CART19 (ARI-0001) and CART-BCMA (ARI-0002) tested in more than 200 patients and which results in several clinicals trials deserved for ARI-0001 the authorization of use (under the rule of Hospital Exemption) by Spanish drug agency (AEMPS) and is under evaluation by European Medicine Agency (EMA) after PRIME (Priority Medicine) designation. Along with his more than 30 years as immunologist, he has authored over 160 peer-reviewed publications, 7 books as publisher and received 17 projects as principal investigation for over 6 million € in peer-reviewed funding and was the inventor in 6 patents.

Raghu Kalluri

Professor and Chairman, Department of Cancer Biology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Frederick F. Becker Distinguished University Chair of Cancer Research
CPRIT Scholar of Cancer Research
Director, Metastasis Research Center, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Director, The Office for Training and Mentoring of Scientists
Associate Vice President, Discovery Science
Co-Director, MSTP MD/PhD Program
Assistant Dean, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Adjunct Professor, Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Rice University
Adjunct Professor, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine

Raghu Kalluri was born in St. Louis, Missouri and received his B.S. in Chemistry and Genetics. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Kansas Medical Center and his M.D. degree from Brown University Medical School. Dr. Kalluri conducted his fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and performed research in areas of tissue injury/repair and regeneration. From 1997 to 2012, Dr. Kalluri was a faculty Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and from 2006 served as a tenured Professor and the Chief of the Division of Matrix Biology with appointments in Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at HMS, Harvard MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and as a research fellow of the HMS Peabody Society. Since 2012, Dr. Kalluri serves as a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Kalluri currently holds the Frederick F. Becker Distinguished University Chair of Cancer Research. Dr. Kalluri’s research has led to seminal discoveries in the area of tissue injury/regeneration, exosomes biology, cancer biology, and cancer metastasis. Several of his scientific discoveries have led to clinical translation. He is the recipient of several mentorship, teaching and research excellence awards, and a fellow of American Society of Clinical Investigation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and UT Ken Shine Education Academy. Dr. Kalluri has published over 350 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Dr. Kalluri has an h-index of 130 with 109,865 lifetime citations and Dr. Kalluri is ranked in the 0.0068% (rank 440) of about 6.8 million scientists (covering 22 scientific fields) in the world for citation impact. Kalluri laboratory has trained 122 postdoctoral fellows/trainees/visiting scholars, 24 graduate students, and 79 undergraduate students. Dr. Kalluri serves on science and health advisory panels in the USA and European Union, and on the editorial boards of several academic journals representing biology and medicine and serves as the Deputy Editor of Cancer Research. Dr. Kalluri’s research has resulted in several issued patents. Dr. Kalluri serves as an advisor to several biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and is a scientific founder of five biotechnology companies.

Camille Leahy

Cancer survivor and patient advocate

Camille is a cancer survivor. In 2020, at age 35, she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Her treatment journey led her to participate in the first made-in-Canada CAR T Clinical Trial, led by Dr. Natasha Kekre, at The Ottawa Hospital, and funded in part by BioCanRx.

Camille underwent various standard treatments for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, but unfortunately without success. With all treatments exhausted, in March 2021 she applied for and met the criteria for the first made-in-Canada CAR T-cell therapy Clinical Trial. Today she is a 38-year-old mother of a teenage daughter and cancer-free thanks to this innovative treatment.

Camille enjoys spending time with her daughter Michela, family and friends. She is a strong advocate for the CAR T-cell therapy that saved her life and is currently involved in efforts to make sure it is available in Canada to others who face an uncertain future like she experienced.

Matthew Macauley

Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta
Tier II Canada Research Chair in Chemical Glycoimmnology and the Raymond U. Lemieux Chair of Carbohydrate Chemistry

Trained as a biochemist, Dr. Macauley carried out his PhD at Simon Frasier University, using chemical biology to tackle roles for glycosylation. This interest was further developed during his Postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute, where Dr. Macauley developed an expertise in glycoimmunology. Following two years as an Assistant Professor at The Scripps Research Institute, Dr. Macauley joined in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alberta in 2017.

Dr. Macauley’s Lab primarily focuses on the immunomodulatory sialic acid-binding Siglec family of receptors. This includes the development of innovative approaches to probe Siglec-glycan interactions on cells and tissues and utilizing new insights about the biological ligands of Siglecs to test hypotheses about the roles of Siglecs in controlling immune cell function.

Dr. Macauley is a tier II Canada Research Chair in Chemical Glycoimmnology and the Raymond U. Lemieux Chair of Carbohydrate Chemistry. Dr. Macauley is passionate about all things ‘glyco’, including: research, teaching, and mentoring.

Özcan Met

Head, Cell Therapy Unit, National Center for Cancer Immune Therapy, Denmark

Özcan Met is heading the Cell Therapy Unit at the National Center for Cancer Immune Therapy, Denmark since 2010, directing all operational activities required for the manufacturing of cellular products intended for use in clinical trials.

He has more than 20 years of research experience in tailoring the immune system to combat cancer and is leading a team at the cutting edge in the development of novel cell-based technologies for patient treatment.

Beverley Moore

Partner & National Leader of BLG’s Intellectual Property Litigation Group

Beverley is national leader of BLG's Intellectual Property Litigation Group. She practises in all areas of intellectual property litigation, with a focus on complex patent and trademark disputes. Beverley also has significant experience with actions brought under the Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations.

Beverley represents clients in a multitude of sectors including life sciences, technology, gaming and mining for patent litigation. She is also interested in the intersection of IP with artificial intelligence and the metaverse as well as other emerging technologies.

Beverley regularly provides strategic advice to clients in all sectors on patent portfolio management. She works closely with BLG's Beyond P Strategy group, bringing her litigation expertise to their unique services. In addition, Beverley advises on patentability, validity and freedom-to-operate issues, and aids in the prosecution of patent applications in Canada.

Having worked with life sciences and biotechnology companies throughout her career, Beverley uses that experience to provide strategic advice on navigating Canada's IP regulatory issues including listing patents on the Patent Register, reporting patents to the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board, Certificates of Supplementary Protection and the Register of Innovative Drugs as it relates to data protection. In addition, Beverley advises on Access to Information requests, in particular those made to Health Canada by pharmaceutical clients.

Beverley consulted on the implementation and application of the intellectual property provisions of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union and has advised on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

Beverley has advocated before the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal, as well as the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board.

Throughout her career, Beverley has been very active in the legal profession. She is one of the founding Co­ chairs of the Eastern Canada Chapter of ChlPs. Beverley is the current chair of the CBA IP Section's Court Practice Committee. She sits on the Steering Committee for DRl's IP Litigation Committee and is one of the co­ vice chairs of IPOwner's Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Issues Committee. In addition, she is a regular speaker and writer on IP issues, and serves on the BLG's Thought Leadership Committee. In addition, she mentors several of the firm's students and associates.

Rimas J. Orentas

Board Chair, CSO and co-founder of Caring Cross

Rimas J. Orentas, PhD, is Board Chair, CSO and co-founder of Caring Cross whose mission is to develop and implement curative cell and gene therapy approaches in the majority world, including CAR-T therapy for leukemia, HIV, and sickle cell disease. He has served as Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. Dr. Orentas has also served as Director of Scientific Integration at CureWorks, a collaborative of academic institutions working to expand CAR-T cell therapy. Dr. Orentas has worked in industry, at the Pediatric Oncology Branch, NCI, NIH, and began his independent research career at the Medical College of Wisconsin, after earning a PhD in Pharmacology and Molecular Science from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. CAR-T cells developed by Dr. Orentas have led to first-in-human trials targeting CD22 (NCI), CD19 (alternate transmembrane), CD20, CD19-20 tandem, CD19-20-22 tri-specific (Lentigen, Miltenyi), and he continues to develop CAR-T approaches for pediatric solid tumors.

Christina Puig Saus

Adjunct Assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles
Senior Fellow, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy
Member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Broad Stem Cell Research Center

Cristina Puig-Saus, Ph.D. is an Adjunct Assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Puig-Saus is also a Senior Fellow from the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) and a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC) and the Broad Stem Cell Research Center (BSRCR). She graduated from the University of Barcelona, and after completing her Ph.D. work developing strategies to improve the design of oncolytic adenovirus, she joined Dr. Antoni Ribas’ team at UCLA as a postdoctoral fellow. During her postdoctoral training, she focused on developing new adoptive cell therapy strategies using hematopoietic stem cells. She led the preclinical effort that culminated in a clinical trial that opened at UCLA to co-administer stem cells and T cells genetically modified to express a NY-ESO TCR for the treatment of melanoma, multiple myeloma, and sarcoma.

Dr. Puig-Saus’ laboratory at UCLA focuses on the design and clinical translation of novel TCR and CAR-engineered T cell therapies for cancer treatment. To this end, Dr. Puig-Saus' team is developing multiple receptors and other engineering strategies to generate potent T cell-based cancer therapeutics. Her team is also studying the mechanisms behind the successful T cell responses unleashed by immune checkpoint blockade in patients with response to therapy to mimic these successful T cell responses into engineered therapies.

Janusz Rak

Professor of Pediatrics, Experimental Medicine, Human Genetics and Biochemistry and Jack Cole Chair in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, McGill University

Janusz Rak, MD, PhD obtained his medical degree in 1981, followed by doctorate at the Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Wroclaw, Poland (1986). He subsequently trained as a Fullbright Fellow at the Michigan Cancer Foundation (1990) in Detroit, MI, and continued his postdoctoral career at the Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, ON, followed by faculty appointments at McMaster and McGill Universities in Canada. He is currently a Professor of Pediatrics, Experimental Medicine, Human Genetics and Biochemistry and Jack Cole Chair in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at McGill University in Montreal, QC, Canada. His laboratory investigates how oncogenic events deregulate tumour microenvironment, orchestrate intercellular communications and trigger vascular alterations and systemic vascular paraneoplastic syndromes in cancer. The focal point of these studies are processes mediated by the exchange of extracellular vesicles (EVs) carrying oncogenic cargo (oncosomes) including their contributions to progression, therapeutic responses and diagnostic approaches (liquid biopsy) in cancer across the age spectrum. He published over 220 research papers (~33,000 citations, h-index 83) and currently directs the CFI funded program – Centre for Applied Nanomedicine (CAN) at RIMUHC and the NET program sponsored by Fondation Charles Bruneau and CIBC to investigate EV-based biomarkers in pediatric cancer, as well as projects supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research and other sources.

Valesca Retèl

Head of the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) division
Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI-AVL)

Prof. dr. Valesca Retèl has a PhD degree in Health Economics and an MSc degree in Health Sciences. She is Head of the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) division at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI-AVL), and endowed professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and Erasmus MC, at the Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management. The professor chair is concerning "Health Technology Assessment In translational research In oncology". Her research is focusing on early Health Technology Assessments concerning a range of applications such as Next Generation Sequencing, Immunotherapy, Real World Data, Image Guided Surgery and cancer survivorship in oncology. She also coordinates Coverage with Evidence Development programs within the NKI-AVL, under which the TIL trial. Valesca uses mathematical modeling to combine information on besides cost-effectiveness, organizational issues, ethical-legal, and patient related aspects of promising new technologies in early stages of development. In the early stages, broad spectrum scenario drafting is a key element in these early assessments. She currently supervises 8 PhD students. On an international level, she is coordinator of the Health Economics working group of the Organization of European Cancer Institutes (OECI), and co-lead of the research team of the European Fair Pricing Network (EFPN). Additionally she is work package leader of several European Commission projects.

Steven Rosenberg

Chief of Surgery, National Cancer Institute and Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Rosenberg is Chief of Surgery at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland and a Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, D.C. He is a Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.

Dr. Rosenberg received his B.A. and M.D. degree at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and a Ph.D. in Biophysics at Harvard University. After completing his residency training in surgery in 1974 at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Rosenberg became the Chief of the Surgery Branch at the National Cancer Institute, a position he has held to the present time.

Dr. Rosenberg pioneered the first effective immunotherapies for patients with advanced cancer. His basic and clinical studies of interleukin-2 directly resulted in the approval of this immunotherapy by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma and renal cancer, many of whom remain disease-free over 25 years after treatment. His studies of cell transfer immunotherapy that resulted in durable complete remissions in patients with metastatic melanoma were the first to directly demonstrate the effective role of T lymphocytes in human cancer immunotherapy. He pioneered the development of gene therapy and was the first to successfully insert foreign genes into humans. He was the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of genetically engineered CAR-T cells to mediate the regression of B-cell malignancies in humans, a treatment now approved by the FDA for widespread use. In recent work Dr. Rosenberg established new approaches for the application of immunotherapy to patients with a variety of common solid epithelial cancers by targeting the unique mutations present in the patient’s cancer.

For these contributions Dr. Rosenberg has received the highest awards from virtually every major organization involved in the study of cancer. Recently he received the Keio Medical Science Prize (2012), the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor (2015), the Novartis Prize for Clinical Immunology (2016),the Albany Medical Center Prize (2018), the American Association of Immunology Steinman Award for Human Immunology Research (2019), the Szent-Gyorgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research (2019), the Edogawa NICHE Prize (2019), the Anthony Cerami Award in Translational Medicine (2019), AACR-CRI Lloyd J. Old Award in Cancer Immunology (2020), Samuel D. Gross Prize from Philadelphia Academy of Surgery (2020), the establishment of the Steven A. Rosenberg Scholars Prize in Cancer Immunotherapy from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (2020), the Dan David Prize in Molecular Medicine from Tel Aviv University, Israel (2021) and the Pezcoller Foundation-AACR Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research (2022) and the 2022 ICON in Surgery Award, American College of Surgeons.

Dr. Rosenberg is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has published over 1200 papers in the peer-reviewed literature. His h-index of 208 continues to make him one of the highest cited clinician/scientists in the world.

Michael Rosu-Myles

Executive Director, Centre for Oncology, Radiopharmaceuticals and Research
Health Canada lead, World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for the Standardization and Evaluation of Biologicals

Dr. Rosu-Myles is the Executive Director for the Centre for Oncology, Radiopharmaceuticals and Research and the Health Canada lead for the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for the Standardization and Evaluation of Biologicals. He manages a team who engage in cutting edge research and product evaluation and testing to support regulatory decisions on the authorization of clinical trials and market access for biologic oncology products, radiopharmaceuticals and novel biologics including both cell and gene therapies. Dr. Rosu-Myles received his Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbiology from the University of Western Ontario and trained as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute in the US National Institutes of Health prior to being recruited to Health Canada to establish a stem cell research program in 2008. Since starting as Executive Director in 2018 Dr. Rosu-Myles has played a leadership role in the implementation of Health Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and in the development of implementation of their new Advanced Therapy Regulations.

Marco Ruella

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology
The Center for Cellular Immunotherapies
University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Marco Ruella obtained his medical degree with high honors and completed his specialization in clinical hematology at the University of Torino, Italy. He was attending physician at the Hematology and Cell Therapy Division of the Mauriziano Hospital and was an Instructor at the Biotechnology School at the University of Torino. From late 2012, he was a Post-doctoral Fellow, and then an Instructor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Center for Cellular immunotherapies (Drs. June and Gill). From 2017 to 2018 he served as Associate Director of Dr. Carl H. June’s laboratory. In 2018, Dr. Ruella was appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology and the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies and Scientific Director of the Lymphoma Program at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ruella was presented with many awards and honors, including the inaugural SITC EMD-Serono Cancer Immunotherapy Clinical Fellowship (2014), the AACR-BMS Oncology Fellowship in Clinical Cancer Research (2015), the ASH Scholar Award (2016), a NIH K99-R00 award (2017), the "Paola Campese" Award Leukemia Research (2017), the Cancer Support Community Award (2018), the 2018 ASH Joanne Levy, MD, Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement, the Gilead Sciences Research Scholar in Hematology/Oncology and the Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation Award (2020), the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Translational Research Program (2021), the Alan Steinrberg Award (2022), an NIH R01/R37 (2022), an NIH P01 (2023) and was inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2023. Dr. Ruella is Senior Editor for Molecular Cancer Therapeutics and Associate Editor for JITC. He serves as the inaugural Chair of the SITC Cellular Therapy committee and the Chair of the ASH Scientific Committee on Transplant Biology and Cellular Therapy. Dr. Ruella is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on targeted immunotherapies for hematological cancers, an inventor in several patents on CART therapy, and the Scientific Founder of viTToria biotherapeutics.

Saif Sikdar

Post Doctoral Fellow, University of Calgary

Dr. Saif Sikdar received an MSc in Cancer Immunology and Biotechnology from the University of Nottingham in 2015, and a PhD in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases from the University of Calgary in 2023. His PhD study was focused on understanding how the host microbiome impacts cancer immune surveillance. His research identified a class of microbiome-derived metabolites called hydroxyphenyl propanoates that enhance anti-tumor immunity and the effectiveness of immune checkpoint blockade therapies. He is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow to further understand how HPP molecules modulate the immune system and test their potential for clinical usage. To find more, connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saif-sikdar-profile

Lauralie Short

PhD Student, BC Cancer

Lauralie Short is a Ph.D. student in Interdisciplinary Oncology under the co-supervision of Dr. Laura Evgin and Dr. Robert Holt at the BC Cancer Research Centre in Vancouver. She received her bachelor’s in pharmacology from the University of Sherbrooke in 2020. She was first introduced to cancer immunotherapies as a Coop Student in Dr. Lee-Hwa Tai’s laboratory. She then went on to complete her Master’s in Immunology in 2021 under the co-supervision of Pr Marie-Josée Boucher and Pr Lee-Hwa Tai, where she worked on combining oncolytic viruses with chemotherapy in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Today, Lauralie’s research is focused on improving the accessibility to CD19 CAR immune cells by moving away from current ex vivo manufacturing protocols and generating an off-the-shelf nanomedicine product that could engineer the CAR immune cells in vivo.

Emily Titus

Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
Notch Therapeutics

Previously, she was Vice President, Technology Advancement at CCRM, where she built cell reprogramming, genome engineering, and pluripotent stem cell differentiation programs and led the formation of Notch Therapeutics as part of CCRM’s company incubation program.

Emily earned a Ph.D. from the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, where she used a combination of laboratory and bioinformatics approaches to define and interpret gene regulatory networks controlling embryonic stem cell fate decisions.

Dmitriy Zamarin

Medical Oncologist, Section Head, Gynecologic Medical Oncology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

I am a medical oncologist specializing in the care of women with gynecologic cancers, including cervical, ovarian, and endometrial cancers. I work closely with a multidisciplinary team of medical oncologists, surgeons, and radiation oncologists with a goal to deliver the highest quality care for our patients and their families.

My clinical and laboratory research is focused on the development of novel ways to use the immune system to treat cancer, and I am involved in clinical trials evaluating novel immunotherapy drugs in patients with cancer. In addition, I have a special interest in genetically engineered oncolytic viruses, an emerging class of immune therapeutic drugs that have shown significant clinical promise in the recent years. By manipulating the oncolytic viruses and the immune system, I’m exploring different ways to enhance the immune recognition of tumors and to develop novel treatment strategies that would be applicable to different cancer types.