Bruce Levine

Co-founder at Tmunity

Speaker

Bruce Levine, PhD, Barbara and Edward Netter Professor in Cancer Gene Therapy, is the Director of the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility (CVPF) in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Abramson Cancer Center, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. The CVPF develops and tests novel cell and gene therapies in single-center and multi-center clinical trials in patients with hematologic malignancies, solid tumors, HIV infection and genetic disease. Twenty clean rooms and Quality Control laboratories staffed by 60 clinical laboratory scientists and regulatory professionals support the mission. Several CVPF trials have been first-in-human trials, including the first use of a lentiviral vector, the first infusions of zinc finger nuclease genome-modified cells and the first use of lentivirally modified cells to treat cancer.

Dr. Levine has overseen the production, testing and release of 2,600 cellular products administered to more than 1,000 patients in clinical trials since 1996. Through these technologies, personalized and enhanced immunity has been engineered, T lymphocytes from HIV+ subjects have been rendered resistant to HIV infection and reinfused, and T lymphocytes from cancer patients have been redirected with chimeric antigen receptors to hunt and destroy their malignancies, in which this was an investigational therapy that received the first Breakthrough Designation from the FDA for an academic institution and is currently in commercial development. Dr. Levine is co-inventor on 17 issued US patents and co-author of more than 120 publications with a Google Scholar citation h-index of 66. He has been interviewed by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BBC and other international media outlets. Dr. Levine received a BA in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Immunology and Infectious Diseases from Johns Hopkins University.