SUDA Pharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX:SUD) has appointed Dr Reuben Benjamin, a cellular immunotherapies expert, to its scientific advisory board for the iNKT platform.
Dr Benjamin is an internationally recognised expert in the field of cellular immunotherapies for the treatment of blood cancer.
SUDA is developing the iNKT (invariant Natural Killer T) cell therapy platform, which is in the preclinical stages and can be used in conjunction with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to treat various blood cancers.
The key advantage of iNKT cells is that they are expected to be suitable for off-the-shelf dosing thus showing signs of being protective against graft versus host disease (GVHD), a side effect that limits conventional cell therapy treatments from being produced from a healthy donor.
“Will provide invaluable expertise to SUDA”
SUDA CEO and managing director Michael Baker said: “To strengthen our ability to develop the iNKT cell therapy platform for off-the-shelf use, we have sought the involvement of leaders in the field.
“Dr Benjamin has tremendous experience developing cell therapies and having input from the chief investigator of the first off-the-shelf clinical trial for B-ALL will provide invaluable expertise to SUDA as we continue to develop our iNKT cell therapy platform.”
Benjamin's experience and expertise
Dr Benjamin is leading the plasma cell disorder service and CAR-T cell program at King’s College London, UK, and has an active research group at King’s College London focusing on allogeneic CAR-T cells for lymphoid malignancies as well as in studying the biology of extramedullary myeloma.
He is also a consultant haematologist and honorary senior lecturer with an interest in multiple myeloma, stem cell transplantation and cell therapy
Dr Benjamin was the chief investigator of the CALM clinical trial, the first off-the-shelf CAR-T cell study for relapsed adult B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) and was also the lead author for the research paper published in Lancet in December 2020.