Paula Cannon, PhD, on What Attendees Can Look Forward to at ASGCT’s 2024 Meeting

“I would encourage people to come to the meeting. It's a fantastic, friendly, and very diverse meeting. It reflects both the roots of the field in basic science and academia, but also the huge interest from biotech and pharmaceutical companies now.”

The American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) Annual Meeting is the world’s largest medical conference dedicated to the fields of cell therapy and gene therapy. Each year, academic researchers, pharmaceutical executives, industry experts, clinicians and clinical trial investigators, patient advocates, policymakers, and other interested attendees come together to discuss and share their knowledge in the field. This year, the ASGCT 2024 Annual Meeting will be held from May 7 to 11 in Baltimore, Marlyand.

In anticipation of the upcoming meeting, CGTLive® sat down with Paula Cannon, PhD, the president elect of ASGCT and a distinguished professor of microbiology at Keck School of Medicine of USC, to discuss what attendees can expect and look forward to this year. Cannon highlighted several important aspects of the meeting that she is looking forward to in 2024, such as the presidential symposium, both broad and targeted sessions, updates on clinical trials, a fireside chat with Peter Marks, MD, PhD, the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, and an awards session for people who have made significant and meaningful contributions to the field. Cannon also spoke about striking developments that have occurred in the field since the last ASGCT Annual Meeting, noting that in December 2023 2 new gene therapy products were approved by the FDA for the treatment of sickle cell disease, one of which is the first FDA-approved gene therapy to use CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology. She also mentioned that important early progress in the realm of in-vivo gene editing of cells will be presented at the 2024 Annual Meeting.