Boosting Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell Therapy via a Synthetic Vaccine

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

2:30 PM-4:00 PM

BIOMED Seminar

Title:
Boosting Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell Therapy via a Synthetic Vaccine
    
Speaker:
Leyuan (Liam) Ma, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Department of Bioengineering (Graduate Group)
Center for Cellular Immunotherapies (CCI)
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)

Details:
Adoptive T cell therapy using Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cells (CAR T) has made significant advances in the treatment of hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. However, a key challenge remains that a sufficient pool of functional CAR T cells are needed to achieve long-term therapeutic efficacy. Here, Dr. Ma will present the development of a synthetic booster vaccine to enhance the long-term CAR T efficacy by vaccine-boosting donor cells through their chimeric receptor directly in vivo. He will discuss an unexpected phenomenon that vaccine-mediated crosstalk between dendritic cells and CAR T cells elicited potent endogenous anti-tumor T cell responses that was critically dependent on CAR T-derived IFN-γ. Finally, Dr. Ma will show a directed evolution based synthetic ligand (mimotope) discovery platform that can be leveraged to develop amph-mimotope vaccine for any CAR of interest (US FDA-approved CD19 CAR will be used as an example).

Biosketch:
Leyuan (Liam) Ma, PhD, obtained his PhD degree in biomedical sciences under the direction of Dr. Michael Green’s lab at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2016. Following graduation, Dr. Ma continued his postdoctoral fellowship in Immunotherapy and Immune Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute under the guidance of Dr. Darrell Irvine. During his fellowship, Dr. Ma developed a synthetic booster vaccine to enhance the Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell therapy for solid tumors, and he was supported by American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship from 2019-2021.  

In 2022, Dr. Ma was appointed as an assistant professor in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ma is also a member of the Raymond G. Perelman Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics (CCMT) at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Ma was awarded the NIAID new innovators award (DP2), W.W. Smith Charitable Trust award, Melanoma Research Alliance young investigator award, Ivy foundation Translational Adult Glioma Award, and Sontag Distinguished Scientist Award.

Contact Information

Carolyn Riley
cr63@drexel.edu