Georgetown Lombardi Visiting Professor and Grand Rounds Lecture Series Featuring Crystal Mackall, MD
“CAR T cells for Solid Cancers: Charting a Path Forward”
Presented by:
Crystal Mackall, MD
Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine
Stanford University
Sponsor: Michael Atkins, MD
Crystal Mackall is the Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Stanford University. She serves as Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy, Associate Director of Stanford Cancer Institute, Leader of the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Stanford.
During a 27-year tenure at NCI culminating as Head of the Immunology Section and Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch, and now at Stanford, she has led an internationally recognized translational research program spanning basic tumor immunology, translational science and early clinical trials of immune based therapies for cancer. Her group was among the first to demonstrate impressive activity of CD19-CAR in pediatric leukemia (Lancet 2015), developed a novel, clinically active CD22-CAR that has been awarded Breakthrough Designation based upon impressive activity in leukemia and more recently in lymphoma (Nat Med 2018, J Clin Onc 2021, Blood 2022). Her group has identified T cell exhaustion as a major feature limiting the activity of CAR T cells (Nat Med 2015), and developed the first exhaustion resistance (Nature 2019) and exhaustion reversal platforms (Science 2021). Recently, her group demonstrated preclinical efficacy of CARs for pediatric diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (Nat Med 2018) and impressive clinical activity of GD2-CAR T cells in this disease (Nature 2022). Her work has both advanced understanding of fundamental immunology and has translated this understanding for the treatment of human disease.
She is the co-inventor on dozens of patents filed and pending and has founded three biotechnology companies focused on cellular immunotherapies (Lyell Immunopharma, Syncopation Life Sciences and Link Cell Therapies). She serves in numerous national leadership positions, including co-Leader of the NCI U54 Pediatric Immunotherapy Discovery and Development Network, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Richard V Smalley Award from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, the AACR-St. Baldrick’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research, and several NIH Director’s awards. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Academy of Physicians and is Board Certified in Pediatrics, Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Internal Medicine.
Lecture Series Presented by Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center