Umoja Biopharma Announces Participation in Upcoming Scientific Summits

SEATTLE, June 30, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Umoja Biopharma, Inc., an immuno-oncology company pioneering off-the-shelf, integrated therapeutics that reprogram immune cells in vivo to treat patients with solid and hematologic malignancies, announced today that the company will participate in two Hanson Wade summits taking place in July in Boston. Details can be found below.*In Vivo Engineering of Therapeutic Cells Summit held July 12-14, 2022 *

Umoja’s participation will begin on July 13:

*Participation:* Panel
*Title:* Applying In Vivo CAR-T Cell Therapy for Oncology and Beyond
*Umoja Speaker:* Shon Green, Ph.D., Senior Director, Translational R&D (In-Vivo)
*Details:* The panel will address how in vivo CAR T-cell therapy obviates current ex vivo bottlenecks including access, efficacy, and toxicity as well as achieving transient versus longer-term effects for different indications.
*Time:* 12:30 PM ET

*Participation:* Poster
*Title:* Preclinical development of UB-VV100, a novel platform for in vivo engineering of therapeutic anti-CD19 CAR T cells
*Umoja Speaker:* Susana Hernandez Lopez, Scientist
*Time:* 3:00 PM ET

Umoja’s participation will continue July 14:

*Participation:* Fireside Chat
*Title:* In Vivo Engineering of Therapeutic Cells as the Future of Cell and Gene Therapy
*Umoja Speaker:* Andy Scharenberg, M.D., Co-founder and CEO
*Details:* The fireside chat will evaluate what has inspired the industry to move from ex vivo to in vivo therapies, outline the advantages and opportunities that in vivo cell and gene therapies offer over current generations, and discuss the next steps to streamline pre-clinical development to fast-track in vivo therapies to the clinic.
*Time:* 9:15 AM ET

*Participation:* Oral Presentation
*Title:* In Vivo Approaches to Generate CAR T Cells Engineered to Mediate Durable Antitumor Responses
*Umoja Speaker:* Ryan Larson, Ph.D., Vice President, Head of Immunology
*Details:* The presentation will cover how manufacturing complexities limit patient access to autologous CAR T-cell products, the ability of Umoja’s VivoVec off-the-shelf lentiviral vector platform to enable efficient generation of functional CAR T-cells in vivo, and how the approach can be applied to target both hematological and solid tumor cancers.
*Time:* 11:30 AM ET

*iPSC Manufacturing Summit from July 26-28, 2022*

Umoja’s participation will begin on July 28:

*Participation*: Oral Presentation
*Title: *Engineering iPSCs with Synthetic Receptors to Drive Differentiation Compatible with Scale-Up
*Umoja Speaker: *Teisha Rowland, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, iPSC Team Lead
*Details: *The presentation will cover how iPSCs can more efficiently be differentiated into functional, persistent immune cell types by genetically engineering iPSCs to express a synthetic cytokine receptor, how differentiation can be performed in suspension to make it compatible with efficient scale-up production, and how the overall approach may be used in a manufacturing setting to drive high-purity immune cell production.
*Time: *11:45 AM ET

*About Umoja Biopharma*

Umoja Biopharma, Inc. is an early clinical-stage company advancing an entirely new approach to immunotherapy. Umoja Biopharma, Inc. is a transformative multi-platform immuno-oncology company founded with the goal of creating curative treatments for solid and hematological malignancies by reprogramming immune cells in vivo to target and fight cancer. Founded based on pioneering work performed at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and Purdue University, Umoja’s novel approach is powered by integrated cellular immunotherapy technologies including the VivoVec in vivo delivery platform, the RACR/CAR in vivo cell expansion/control platform, and the TumorTag targeting platform. Designed from the ground up to work together, these platforms are being developed to create and harness a powerful immune response in the body to directly, safely, and controllably attack cancer. Umoja believes that its approach can provide broader access to the most advanced immunotherapies and enable more patients to live better, fuller lives. To learn more, visit http://umoja-biopharma.com/.

*Media Contact:*
Darren Opland, Ph.D.
LifeSci Communications
darren@lifescicomms.com