A better understanding of the role of various immune effectors in various disease settings can help in the design of robust and combinatorial immune cell-based therapies. In this session, one speaker will describe the mechanisms by which T cells are activated in GVHD where some T-cell subsets cause GVHD, and others promote a graft-vs-leukemia effect and immune reconstitution with a lower risk for GVHD. A second speaker will discuss the importance of understanding how and why these cells differ for development of cell-based therapeutics. Another speaker will describe studies showing that NK cells can develop long-lived, specific memory of a variety of antigens and the implications of such memory-like features for NK-based cell therapies. The final speaker will discuss recent success of adoptive therapy with genetically engineered T cells expressing chimeric antigen receptors that recognize specific target antigens for treatment of chronic lymphoid leukemia.

Dr. von Andrian and Dr. Silberstein did not consent to having their presentation captured and recorded.