International Conference on Cellular Immunotherapy in Pediatric Oncology (CIPO)

Crystal L Mackall MD is the Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor and Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Stanford University, the Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy, Associate Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy @ Stanford. For over three decades she has led an internationally recognized translational research program focused on immune oncology. Her work has advanced understanding of fundamental immunology and translated this understanding for the treatment of human disease with a major focus on children’s cancers. Her group was among the first to demonstrate impressive activity of CD19-CAR in pediatric leukemia, developed a CD22-CAR with potent activity in CAR19 resistant B cell malignancies, and is demonstrating impressive clinical activity of GD2-CAR T cells in a lethal pediatric brain tumor. Her group implicated T cell exhaustion as a major feature CAR T cell potency and has created numerous approaches to enhance potency of human T cells. Recent work elucidated a critical role for macrophage mediated clearance of T cells and created an engineered CD47 to overcome this axis. Mackall's group uses synthetic biology to engineer safer and more effective cellular therapeutics, including creation of a regulatable “remote-controlled” CAR T cell platform and multiplex gene regulation using Cas13d based RNA degradation. She has received numerous awards, including election to the National Academy of Medicine, American Society of Clinical Investigation and American Academy of Physicians, and she is a fellow of the AACR Academy and the Academy of Immuno-oncology. She has co-founded three biotechnology companies, Lyell Immunopharma, CARGO Therapeutics and Link Cell Therapies and ACCESSforKIDS, a non-profit developing cell therapies for pediatric cancers.

Kai Wucherpfennig is Chair of the Department of Cancer Immunology and Virology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School.  His research focuses on the role of cytotoxic T cells and NK cells in cancer immunotherapy.  His lab studies mechanisms of resistance to cancer immunotherapies and develops novel immunotherapy approaches based on these molecular insights.  He has been elected as a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (2006), the Henry Kunkel Society at Rockefeller University (2007) and as Fellow of the American Society for the Advancement of Science (2009). 

Dr. Campana is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Senior Principal Investigator in the Cancer Science Institute at the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, where he holds the Mrs. Lee Kong Chian Chair in Advanced Cellular Therapy and the President’s Venture Creation Chair. His main interest is translational research in oncology, focusing on immunotherapy.

Dr. Campana obtained his MD and PhD degrees in Italy, where he trained in hematology. He received his immunology training at the Royal Free Hospital in London before moving to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital as Assistant Member; when he left in 2011 he was Full Member in the Departments of Oncology and Pathology, and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee.

He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. Other honors include the Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine, the Republic of Singapore President’s Technology Award, and the Italian Bilateral Scientific Award. He is the inventor on multiple patents and the scientific founder of three biotechnology companies.