Next-gen immunotherapies for cancer, Andrew Scharenberg, Co-founder & CEO, Umoja Biopharma

Biotech 2050 Podcast

Synopsis: Andrew Scharenberg is the Co-founder and CEO of Umoja Biopharma, a company pioneering the future of immunotherapy by reprogramming T cells in vivo. Umoja’s groundbreaking integrated platform therapeutics reprogram the immune system in the patient’s body to target cancer cells and generate lasting remissions. Andrew talks about the CAR T-cell therapy space, the opportunities he sees, and how he sees the space evolving over the next two decades. He discusses the work that his team is pursuing at Umoja to develop a new approach to cancer therapy that retools a patient’s immune system in vivo, enhancing the body’s natural capacity to fight cancer, and where the company is from a development perspective. He also talks about how he thinks about indication selection, particularly in the early stages of biotech. Finally, he shares how the pandemic impacted his approach to team building and his thoughts on distributed teams. Biography: Dr. Andrew M. Scharenberg is the founder and CEO of Umoja Biopharma, an MPM portfolio company. He also serves as an Executive Partner at MPM Capital, and Chairs the Scientific Advisory Boards at Generation Bio, Genti Bio, and Alpine Immune Sciences. Prior to founding Umoja, Andrew co-directed the Program in Cell and Gene Therapy at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, working to translate cell and gene therapies for the treatment of inherited immunologic and blood diseases. This work led to the development of a program in engineered regulatory T-cells, partnered with Casebia Therapeutics for the purpose of developing a gene edited cell therapeutic for Type I diabetes and other inflammatory diseases. Previously, he was the Chief Scientific Officer of Cellectis Therapeutics, where he initiated the development of an allogeneic CAR T-cell platform, and co-founder of Pregenen Inc., a gene editing and cell-signalling technology company that was acquired by bluebird bio in 2014. Andrew earned his M.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and then completed residency at the University of North Carolina Children’s Hospital and his fellowship in immunology at NIH and at the Division of Experimental Pathology, Beth Israel Hospital. From 2000 to 2020, he was an attending Physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital, a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. Andrew received the American Pediatric Society/Society for Pediatric Research National Young Investigator Award in 2002. He is an active member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Pediatric Society.