GeneTherapyLive’s Weekly Rewind – September 17, 2021

Welcome to GeneTherapyLive’s Weekly Rewind! We’ve compiled 5 highlights from this week’s coverage of advances in gene and cell therapies, including FDA actions, notable research, and interviews with experts across the field.

The director of the Solid Tumor Immunotherapy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania discussed the issue of exhausted T-cells, touching on the role of BET proteins in T-cell function and their mechanism of exhaustion.

Following Astellas Pharma’s voluntary pause of their ASPIRO trial due to a patient experiencing a serious liver AE, the trial has now been placed on a second clinical hold after the patient died. This marks the fourth death over the course of the trial.

Directors from the Moran Eye Center discussed their research on the genetics of age-related macular degeneration, including the mechanism of AMD and their discovery of the protective effect of the HTRA1 gene.

Tevogen Bio and Thomas Jefferson University are beginning enrollment of their phase 1 trial of TVGN-489 for the treatment of high-risk patients with COVID-19, which could potentially be the first cell therapy treatment for the virus.

Paul Lammers, MD, MSc, the president and chief executive officer of Triumvira Immunologics, discussed the company’s T-cell antigen coupler technology, its potential in both hematologic malignancies and solid tumors, and their investigations in their lead program, TAC-01 HER2.