Folashade Otegbeye receives Endowed Chair in Cell and Gene Therapy Translation

Dr. Folashade “Shade” Otegbeye, associate professor (Hematology and Oncology) is the new holder of the Fleischauer Family Endowed Chair in Cell and Gene Therapy Translation.

Otegbeye supervises the minutiae of the machinery that fuels the Therapeutic Products Program (TPP) at Fred Hutch Cancer Center.

“I consider myself a manufacturing scientist,” she said. “I oversee the manufacturing component of translational science.”

Support from the endowed chair will help establish a platform for CRISPR gene editing. TPP has not yet used CRISPR, a gene editing tool that allows scientists to modify DNA, correcting or deleting faulty genes with extreme precision.

Otegbeye leads a TPP project developing this technology to alter and transform T cells and natural killer cells. Some of the newest life-saving cancer treatments over the last decade involve white blood cells collected from cancer patients, which are then manufactured into cancer-killing cells using gene-editing tools.

“It will now be easier and faster to turn new ideas for immune cell engineering into treatments for our patients in clinical trials,” she said. “The endowed chair will help us continue evaluating, refining and developing the manufacturing processes and assays we need. It will also let us ask what else is out there, how can we keep up with it and how can we innovate on top of that?”