Richard Morgan, PhDChief Scientific Officer at Be Biopharma
Profile
Dr Rick Morgan joined Bio Biopharma as the Chief Scientific Officer in March 2021. At Be Bio, he leads the research team developing a novel class of cell therapies using engineered B cells and plasma cells to treat both rare diseases and cancer. The bulk of Dr. Morgan’s career was at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he led a series of laboratories in the field of cell and gene therapy. He was a member of the team that published the first approved human gene transfer experiment in 1990 (N. Engl. J. Med. 323:570, 1990). Rick has extensively published on T-cell receptor (TCR) gene therapy and was the lead author on the first report where this technology was shown to mediate cancer regression in patients (Science 314:126, 2006). In 2013, Rick made the switch from academia to industry to lead the immunotherapy efforts at bluebird bio where he was vice president of immunotherapy. Major accomplishments at bluebird include driving all pre-clinical activities for bluebird’s first oncology asset for the treatment of multiple myeloma, an anti-BCMA CAR. The successful clinical application of this technology was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (N Engl J Med. 2019 May 2;380(18):1726-1737), culminating in the approval of this approach as medicine (Abecma) in 2021. In 2018, Rick moved to Editas Medicine as senior vice president of immunogenetics where he focused on gene editing applications in immunotherapy. At Editas, he led the development of off-the-shelf cellular treatments for cancer immunotherapy using gene edited NK cells. Externally, Rick served as a member of the board of directors of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT), and he is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Keystone symposia. Rick is an author of more than 200 scientific publications including papers with Nobel laureates EJ Corey, Harold Varmus and Andrew Fire. Rick holds a B.A. in biochemistry from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in genetics from The Johns Hopkins University.
Agenda Sessions
Engineered B Cells as a Novel Off-the-Shelf Therapy
, 9:15amView Session