Wednesday, May 21, 2025
12PM – 1PM ET
Online (Zoom)
What are some challenges impeding the broad development of engineered cell-based therapies?
Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) is hosting a webinar designed for advocates on May 21, 2025, as a follow-up to the public meeting hosted by Friends’ and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) titled: “Unlocking Next-Generation Therapies” on May 9, 2025. The webinar, “Unlocking Next-Generation Therapies Meeting Recap: Sharing Next Steps and Opportunities with Advocates,” will focus on the future of engineered cell-based therapies including challenges impeding progress, clinical implications, and opportunities for patient advocacy. The advocates webinar will feature:
- A recap of Friends’ recent meeting and working group on innovative models for developing engineered cell-based therapies.
- A panel discussion highlighting multi-stakeholder perspectives on challenges and proposed solutions.
- Live Q&A session with patient advocates, researchers, and regulatory experts shaping solutions proposed in Friends’ recent Cell & Gene Therapies project working group.
Attendees are encouraged to submit question(s) regarding the topics covered in the webinar.
Click the button below to submit your question before the event. Additional event details can be found below.
Background
Engineered cell-based therapies have demonstrated remarkable success in treating certain cancers and, given their personalized nature, hold promise for rare cancers and other difficult-to-treat diseases, especially when conventional therapies may be insufficient or unavailable. However, current development and manufacturing models often face challenges related to regulatory uncertainty, timeliness, accessibility, and production costs, which can be especially limiting for rare disease applications. Overcoming these challenges will be necessary to create a sustainable pathway that ensures patients—particularly those with rare diseases—benefit from these promising therapies.
To explore solutions, Friends and PICI launched a multi-stakeholder working group to develop a practical framework for advancing regulatory and manufacturing approaches that can enable timely access to promising therapies without compromising quality or safety. This includes regulatory flexibilities for rare disease populations, reimbursement considerations to help recover development costs while facilitating sustained patient access to promising therapies, and alternative manufacturing approaches, including point-of-care models to enable timely therapy development, particularly for rare or hard-to-treat diseases. Together, these solutions aim to facilitate sustainable approaches and innovative policies that expand the availability of engineered cell-based therapies.
