Cellular Therapy Series Part I: How Engineered Cellular Therapies are Reshaping Medicine

Charlotte Schubert is a reporter at GeekWire covering life sciences, health, and biotech. She earned her Ph.D. at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where she often peered at the first cell divisions of the nematode C. elegans under a microscope. She has also worked in an epigenomics lab at Fred Hutch and a microbiology lab at the University of Washington. She is a former editor and Washington, D.C. correspondent at Nature Medicine, and recently worked as a science editor for a cellular immunotherapy group at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

Dr. Tina Albertson is Chief Medical Officer and Head of Development of Lyell Immunopharma, a T-cell reprogramming company committed to curing solid tumors with cellular therapies.  Dr. Albertson has over a decade of leadership in the clinical drug development of biologics and cellular therapies, from first-in-human to registrational clinical trials.  Prior to Lyell, she was VP of Global Drug Development at Juno Therapeutics, a BMS company, where she led a global team in the development of lisocabtagene maraleucel, a CD19-directed CAR T-cell product, from the first patient treated to BLA submission.  Dr. Albertson is a Pediatric Oncologist by training and has her MD from Stanford University and her PhD in Cancer Biology from the University of Washington.

Alicia Collins is Alicia Collins is the head of Cell Therapy Global Patient Operations at Bristol Myers Squibb, and part of the team that commercially launched the company’s first two cell therapy products. Alicia has 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry at Merck, Genentech, and BMS in both domestic and international roles. Her experience encompasses supply chain, both internal and external manufacturing, and materials management. Alicia has a BS in Integrated Science & Technology with a double concentration in biotechnology and environmental science from James Madison University.

Ms. Heidi Hagen has extensive experience in operations management and commercializing innovative technologies for the last 30 years, including 20 years in the cell and gene therapy industry. Currently, Ms. Hagen is Chief Technology Officer of Sonoma Biotherapeutics, a privately held company leading the development of adoptive Treg cell therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. She also serves on the Board of Directors for cell and gene therapy companies Vericel and Obsidian Therapeutics. For part of 2021, she served as interim CEO and sat on the board for Ziopharm Oncology for 2.5 years, a publicly traded company developing immune-oncology gene and cell therapies. She is also co-founder and former Chief Strategy Officer of Vineti, a software platform company for cell and gene therapy supply chain management. Formerly, she served as a Board member for Lykan Biosciences, the Global COO for SOTIO Biotech A.S. and the Senior Vice President of Operations for Dendreon. She began her career at Immunex Corporation and worked for ten years in a range of roles in drug development and operations management. Ms. Hagen has a BS in Cell and Molecular Biology, an MS in Bioengineering, and an MBA from the University of Washington.

Michael Jensen is the Vice President and Chief Therapeutics Officer, at Seattle Children’s Health System. He is an internationally recognized leader in the field of CAR T-cell cancer immunotherapy with over 20 years of experience in the research and clinical translation of this therapeutic modality. He has focused on the applications to childhood cancers. Dr. Jensen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and then completed training in Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at the University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center with a focus on the immunobiology of tumor-specific T-cells. In 2010, Dr. Jensen returned to Seattle and joined the University of Washington School of Medicine faculty as a Professor of Pediatrics and Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering and was the founding director of the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.