Samantha Ginn and Vidya Browder
The Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF) had its partnership with the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) highlighted at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the ASGCT, through which CTF is funding the ‘ASGCT Career Development Awards’ to support cutting-edge research in gene therapy and to grow the NF field. Among the 16,000 attendees were CTF’s Chief Executive Officer Annette Bakker, PhD; Chief Medical Officer Brigid Garelik, MD, MPH; and Director of Research Vidya Browder, PhD.
The recipients of the CTF-funded awards are: Ngoc Tam Le Tran from the University of Massachusetts, delving into the integration of AAV vectors carrying truncated inverted terminal repeats in the genomes of transduced cells; Lukas Landegger from Stanford University, advancing AAV-mediated gene therapy to target vestibular schwannoma; and Chance Meers from Columbia University, pioneering the use of transposon-encoded RNA guided nucleases for targeted site-specific recombination.
ASGCT Career Development Awards Presentation Ceremony
In addition, CTF was pleased to witness Miguel Sena-Esteves of the University of Massachusetts and incoming board member of ASGCT, present his groundbreaking work funded by the Gilbert Family Foundation. His talk, ‘Utilizing the endogenous NF1 promoter for widespread cell-specific expression,’ sparked a lively discussion about NF, underscoring the collective attention it deserves.
CTF is proud to be at the forefront of gene therapy alongside our partners Gilbert Family Foundation and the Neurofibromatosis Therapeutic Acceleration Program (NTAP), driving progress and transforming lives.
