On November 14, 2019, the first Zhangjiang International Summit on Cell Therapy opened at Zhangjiang Science City.

    As the international conference representing China's most advanced cell therapy technologies and most concentrated industry and gathering the most industry experts and professionals, the event published a number of related scientific studies, and was attended by nearly 50 experts and professionals in cell therapy from 16 countries and regions, including Bruce L. Levine, president of the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy and professor at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Christian Brechot, former director of the Institut Pasteur and president of Global Virus Network, and Zhigang Tian, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Medical Center at School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China. They discussed such latest topics as cell and gene therapy (including gene editing), new technologies of cell therapy (clinical application of CAR-T, CAR-NK, TCR-T, iPSCs, etc.), cell therapy process development (GMP-level cell production, contract development and manufacturing organization, cell storage, cold chain for biologics, cell bank, etc.), immune cell and stem cell engineering, clinical trials and application of cell therapy products, and development of cell therapy industry, aiming to project the prospects and development path of the cell therapy industry, share the latest cutting-edge technologies, and promote the growth of the life and health industry.

    Centering on the above hot topics, the participants exchanged ideas on related technological progress, research findings, application prospects (including for cancer, diabetes, eye diseases and joint diseases) and difficulties in development of cell therapy. They analyzed the pressing issue of commercialization from multiple perspectives such as technology, regulation and market, focusing on bottlenecks such as GMP regulations, viral vector preparation, automated production and policy environment.

        

 

Zhigang Tian, academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Medical Center and the Institute of Immunology at School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China delivered a keynote speech on NK cells for cancer immunotherapy

 

 

Christian Brechot, former director of the Institut Pasteur and president of Global Virus Network, Paris, France delivered a keynote speech on the application of lentiviral vectors

 

       

 

Professor Wenhong Zhang, director of Department of Infectious Diseases at Huashan Hospital, Fudan University and deputy director of Shanghai Institute of Liver Diseases at Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, China delivered a keynote speech on immunotherapy for chronic hepatitis B and liver cancer

 

      

Professor Yuji Shiba of the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Shinshu University, Matsumoto, Japan made a special report on the preclinical transplantation study of iPS cell-derived cardiomyocytes in non-human primates 

 

        

Diether Lambrechts, VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, Leuven, Belgium delivered a speech on response to immune checkpoint inhibitors at single-cell resolution

 

        

 

Henry H. Ji, president and CEO of Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc., San Diego, U.S.A. shared the experience of a biotech company in CAR-T therapy and product development from the perspective of business development

 

      Centering on the above hot topics, the participants exchanged ideas on related technological progress, research findings, application prospects (including for cancer, diabetes, eye diseases and joint diseases) and difficulties in development of cell therapy. They analyzed the pressing issue of commercialization from multiple perspectives such as technology, regulation and market, focusing on bottlenecks such as GMP regulations, viral vector preparation, automated production and policy environment.