Invited Speaker: Xiaoqi ‘Kevin’ Sun, Ph.D.
Scientist and Nonviral Delivery Team Leader, Editas Medicine
I am a pharmaceutical scientist and innovator passionate about drug/gene delivery, gene editing, cancer immunotherapy and cell engineering. I have a track record of delivering:
- Established the mRNA-LNP platform in Editas Medicine and leading development of three AsCas12a-LNP drug candidates from concept to nonhuman primate (NHP).
- Invention of a potentially best-in-class STING agonist platform for systemic and local cancer immunotherapy, which laid the foundation of a startup company Saros Therapeutic.
- Invention of the first red blood cell (RBC)-based artificial antigen-presenting cell (aAPC), which is adopted by Rubius Therapeutics for next-generation RBC therapy development (RTX-321 in Phase I clinical trial).
- Developed a series of personalized cancer neoantigen vaccines (EVOQ Therapeutics).
In this talk, I will introduce how to leverage metal ions for immune modulation and enhanced cancer immunotherapy. I will spotlight a pioneering metalloimmunotherapy integrates stimulators of interferon genes (STING) agonists with nutritional metal ions, which dramatically amplifies STING activation and type-I interferon response. Through pharmaceutical engineering, I developed a highly potent metalloimmunotherapy nanomedicine that shows remarkable success in treating advanced tumors, including those resistant to existing immunotherapies, and in large animal models. Additionally, I will share my findings on the extensive interplay between metal ions and various immune pathways, highlighting new research opportunities and their vast potential in disease management.
