CAR T-Cell Therapy with Drs. Gottschalk and Velasquez

Dec 28, 2023

In this episode, host Shikha Jain, MD, speaks with St. Jude’s Steven Gottschalk, MD, and Paulina Velasquez, MD, about the evolution of bone marrow transplant and cell therapy, increasing accessibility to CAR T-cell therapy and more.

•    Welcome to another exciting episode of Oncology Overdrive :58
•    About Gottschalk 1:12
•    About Velasquez 1:57
•    The interview 2:23
•    About Gottschalk’s journey and how he ended up in this space. 2:56
•    About Velasquez’s journey and how she ended up in this space. 4:16
•    Gottschalk on the history of severe combined immune deficiency (SCID), or “bubble boy disease” and his work on developing the cure.  5:04
•    When you think about what we have learned about immunotherapy, immune systems and cancer treatment over the last fifty years, did you think we would be where we are today in cancer care? 7:27
•    How have CAR T-cells transformed health care so far, and what will they do for the future? 8:53
•    What are you currently working on, and what excites you most about that work?  9:57
•    Do you think that we can expect a transformation in CAR T-cells being used in solid tumors in the future? 12:34
•    How do we prioritize enhanced CAR T-cells in clinical studies? 13:38
•    How can we address the challenges facing the delivery of CAR T-cell therapy and make it more accessible to patients? 17:04
•    Where do you see CAR T-cell therapy going in cancer care and in immunodeficiencies? 21:03
•    If you were interviewed again in five years, what do you think you will be doing then, and what do you think we will be talking about? 25:42
•    If someone could only listen to the last two minutes of this episode, what would you want them to take away? 30:31
•    How to contact Gottschalk and Velasquez 31:22
•    Thanks for listening 31:51

Stephen Gottschalk, MD, St. Jude Department of bone marrow transplantation and cellular therapy chair, focuses his research on cancer immunotherapy, cell therapy and stem cell transplantation. The Gottschalk laboratory focuses on Epstein-Barr virus-specific T cells for treating EBV-associated cancers and using genetically modified T cells for cancer immunotherapy. 

Paulina Velasquez, MD, St. Jude Department of bone marrow transplantation and cellular therapy, has made significant contributions to the field of immunotherapy, developing novel T-cell therapy platforms for pediatric hematological malignancies. Her team is pursuing projects that address antigen discovery, tumor immune evasion, persistence and efficacy of CAR T cells and cell-cell interaction within the tumor microenvironment. 

We’d love to hear from you! Send your comments/questions to Dr. Jain at [e-mail]. Follow Healio on X, formerly known as Twitter, and LinkedIn: @HemOncToday and https://www.linkedin.com/company/hemonctoday/. Follow Dr. Jain on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ShikhaJainMD. Gottschalk can be reached via email [e-mail]. Velasquez can be reached via email [e-mail]. 

Disclosures:  Jain reports no relevant financial disclosures. Gottschalk reports he is co-inventor on patents and patent applications in the fields of cell or gene therapy for cancer, a member of the scientific advisory board of Be Biopharma and CARGO, and the data and safety monitoring board (DSMB) of Immatics and has received honoraria from TESSA Therapeutics. Velasquez reports patent applications in the field of T-cell immunotherapy.