reNEW x Cure One December Lecture: Sonja Schrepfer

Omschrijving

Sonja Schrepfer (Cedars Sinai Medical Center) is a leading innovator in regenerative and transplant immunology. We are excited to welcome her and hear more about her truly pioneering work on immune tolerance of cell therapies and transplantation. Below you will find a short bio and abstract.

Prof. Sonja Schrepfer

Work by Dr. Sonja Schrepfer is at the forefront of stem immunobiology and paves the way for treatment of a wide range of diseases – from supporting functional recovery of failing myocardium to the derivation of other cell types to treat diabetes, blindness, cancer, lung, neurodegenerative, and related diseases. Her work demonstrates that protecting transplanted cells from immune rejection is the key to unlocking the potential of regenerative medicine.

Dr. Schrepfer is Professor at the Cedars Sinai Medical Center (in the Departments of Surgery and Regenerative Medicine) and a Scientific Founder (Inventor of the Hypoimmune Platform) of Sana Biotechnology, Inc.

Brief abstract

Protecting Allogeneic Transplants from Immune Rejection is the Key to Bringing Cell-based Therapies to Patients

In order to make allogeneic “off-the-shelf” cell therapies clinically useful and avoid rejection absent immunosuppression, they need to evade host immune responses, a property we refer to as being “hypoimmune”. To overcome the allogeneic immune response, engineered cells must overcome both, adaptive and innate immunity.  We demonstrated in various pre-clinical models using different cell types that protecting allogeneic transplants from rejection is feasible using genetic engineering to create hypoimmune cells.

In an Investigator Sponsored Trial the first patient with type-1 diabetes (T1D) was now treated with hypoimmune islet cells from an allogeneic donor; the study met all of its initial goals. The patient is doing well and is now making his own insulin for the first time in decades without immunosuppression.

The data from this first-in-human study are an important first step towards the ultimate goal of a potentially curative islet cell therapy for the broad T1D population and establish proof of concept of the hypoimmune technology.