In this episode we are returning to a very exciting topic of immunooncology and we will talk in detail about novel approaches to treat cancer, based on CAR-T cell technology.

Please welcome Dr. Eric von Hofe, the Senior Advisor and former President of Affyimmune Therapeutics. Eric’s story is a showcase of a remarkable career in the biotech industry. Eric studied Biology at UC Berkeley and received his PhD from the University of Southern California. HEric continued his career in cancer research doing two PostDocs at ETH Zurich and Harvard and then taking a position of Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In 1992 Eric made a transition to the biopharmaceutical industry leading the development of antisense oligonucleotide therapies at Hybridon. Eric subsequently led multidisciplinary drug development programs at Millennium Pharmaceuticals as a Director of Drug Discovery Research. Eric has been fundamental for two prominent immuno-oncology companies: Antigen Express, a company focusing on peptide-based cancer vaccines; and Affyimmune Therapeutics, a biotech startup developing novel approaches for CAR-T cell based therapies. With about 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals and four patents Eric is a true expert in the field of oncology

Together with Eric we discussed:
Differences between career in academia and industry
Evolution of therapeutic landscape in oncology over the last 30 years
Role of immunology in development of novel cancer therapies
CAR-T cells and their role in combating cancer
Affinity tuning of CAR-T cells as mechanism to decrease off-target effect
Cancer vaccines: peptide vs mRNA
The future of immunooncology

Get in touch with Eric:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericvonhofe/
Email: evhlfe@gmail.com
Web: https://affyimmune.com/

Make sure to download the full show notes with our guest's bio, links to their most notable work, and our recommendations for further reads on the topic of the episode at pmedcast.com