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2019 Featured Talks » Travis Young



Controlling CAR-T Cell Therapy


Travis Young, PhD
VP, Biologics, Calibr at Scripps Research






Travis Young, PhD
VP, Biologics
Calibr at Scripps Research


Dr. Young is the Vice President of Biologics at Calibr, a division of Scripps Research. He received a BS in biochemistry from Boston College and a PhD in chemical biology from The Scripps Research Institute as an ARCS scholar. At Scripps, his work focused on the development of unnatural amino acid incorporation methodologies to improve the properties of therapeutic proteins. This work was foundational for the development of programs in the Calibr pipeline today, including a bispecific antibody for prostate cancer which will enter clinical trials next year. After receiving his PhD, he completed a postdoc at Harvard Medical School with an NIH fellowship, in the department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology with Dr. Christopher T Walsh.

Dr. Young was a member of the founding group of principal investigators at Calibr and serves as the lead investigator on multiple bench-to-bedside antibody and cellular therapy-based programs. Dr. Young maintains a research group focused in the development of novel therapeutics at the interface between protein engineering and synthetic biology. This research spans multiple disease indications including cancer, autoimmune, metabolic disorders, and infectious disease. His work has been highly awarded and received support from the Wellcome Trust, NIH (National Cancer Institute), Department of Defense, Mesothelioma Research foundation, American Cancer Society, among others. His work has resulted in numerous publications and patents with >1500 citations in the past 5 years. Dr. Young’s lead program, a switchable CAR-T cell platform, was recently partnered with AbbVie. This broad relationship enables his team to lead the first in human clinical study for the switchable CAR-T cell platform while studying the potential to expand CAR-T cell impact into solid tumors.