Understanding and leveraging cord blood bank capabilities and practices in cell therapy development

Thursday 08:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT / 16:00 BST / 17:00 CEST

Sponsor

Understanding and leveraging cord blood bank capabilities and practices in cell therapy development

The cord blood banking industry has been around for over 30 years, focusing on acquiring units for use in hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Recent research indicates that cord blood can be a valuable source of naïve cells for cell therapy manufacturing. Cord blood banks are evolving their processes to accommodate the use of cord blood units for these new and evolving purposes. This helps developers understand the legacy constraints and complexities that banks are subject to as they strive to help cell therapy developers navigate the sourcing of this valuable resource.

This webinar will highlight cord blood bank capabilities and provide insight into current banking practices and considerations for developers as they consider using cord blood as a starting material for further manufacture.

Understanding the current banking practices and additional capabilities, including consistencies or divergence between cord blood banks
Discover how requests to modify current banking practices may impact the feasibility and/or scalability of sourcing cord blood units
Insights into how and why developers should consider the use of cord blood units as a cell therapy starting material

Joy Aho

Director of Product Management and Strategy at NMDP BioTherapies

Joy Aho, PhD, is the Senior Product Manager at Be The Match BioTherapies®, where she develops innovative products and best-in-class services for the cell and gene therapy industry. Prior to joining the team, she worked in product development and management at Bio-Techne for 13 years designing pioneering clinical and discovery tools for the development of celland gene therapies.

Aho received her PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology & Genetics from the University of Minnesota, and her research led her to studying the role of TGFß family proteins during embryonic development utilizingstem cells and developmental models.

Amanda Conerty

Executive Director, Process, Analytical Development and Manufacturing at Artivia Biotherapeutics

Amanda Conerty is the Executive Director of Process, Analytical Development and Manufacturing at Artiva Biotherapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company dedicated to delivering highly effective, off-the-shelf, allogeneic, natural killer cell-based therapies. Amanda is an ASCP-certified clinical laboratory scientist with more than 20 years of experience in cell therapy development and manufacturing. In her current role at Artiva, she leads the process development, analytical development, manufacturing, and supply chain operations for cell products across all development programs. Prior to Artiva, Amanda spent more than 8 years at Fate Therapeutics, where she held positions of increasing responsibilities in the CMC group, culminating in her position as Senior Director of Manufacturing and Quality Control.

Prior to Fate, Amanda managed a clinical Blood and Marrow Transplant program at the University of Louisville Brown Cancer center where she led both the apheresis department and BMT lab, while also overseeing Quality for both the pediatric transplant lab and the University GMP research lab. Amanda also operated as a Clinical Application Specialist at Baxter Healthcare supporting their CD34 cell therapy programs in cardiac and limb ischemia and spent 5 years at St Jude Children’s Research hospital in the clinical cell therapy lab, developing research cell therapy programs for clinical applications. Amanda holds a BS in Clinical Laboratory Science and a Graduate Certificate in Reproductive Laboratory Science from the University of Kentucky.

Sara Shields

Associate Processing Facility Director at Cleveland Cord Blood Center

Sara Shields, a certified Medical Laboratory Scientist, is the Associate Director, Processing Facility of the Cleveland Cord Blood Center (CCBC). She is also the Director of Operations of the Cleveland Cell Therapy Incubator, a subsidiary of CCBC. Sara directs laboratory operations and specializes in process optimization. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the clinical healthcare and research field, with 15 years focused on cord blood operations and manufacturing. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Medical Technology and a Master of Public Health degree.