Approval, Commercialization Highlighted at Cell & Gene Meeting on the Mesa

Resolving the complexities of the tumor microenvironment (TME) is necessary for a comprehensive understanding of cancer biology. For example, while breast cancer is well studied, open questions remain, including why some ductal carcinomas in situ (DCIS) progress to invasive carcinoma and some do not.

The possibilities for gene therapies are being realized as candidates come to market with hundreds more in development. Adeno-associated virus (AAV) is a common vector, yet current production, purification, and analytics are far from optimal.

COVID-19 represents a global crisis, yet significant knowledge gaps remain about human immunity to SARS-CoV-2. As many researchers raced to develop the vaccines and therapeutics needed to mitigate the pandemic, other investigators took up the task of understanding the human body’s diverse response to this virus. With technology advancing exponentially, researchers have an arsenal of analytic tools now at their disposal to decipher the most elusive aspects of viral immunobiology.

Cure rates for children with cancer have increased dramatically over the past 40 years with the advent of modern treatment strategies, but most patients have serious life-long medical conditions as a result of the toxicity of their treatments. Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) is a recently described entity that has been associated with chronic diseases, most notably coronary artery disease. To determine if the presence and features of CHIP are different in childhood cancer survivors compared to age and sex-matched controls, we performed targeted single-cell DNA sequencing of thousands of mature and progenitor hematopoietic cells from a cohort of patients that are greater than 50 years of age and received greater than 25g/m2 of highly mutagenic alkylating chemotherapy as a child.