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Mark Cobbold: Incredible Year in Cell Therapy and Immunotherapy at AstraZeneca

Mark Cobbold/X

Dec 22, 2024, 17:39

Mark Cobbold: Incredible Year in Cell Therapy and Immunotherapy at AstraZeneca

Mark Cobbold, SVP of IO Discovery and Cell Therapy Oncology at AstraZeneca, shared on LinkedIn:

“Wrapping Up an Incredible Year in Cell Therapy and Immunotherapy at AstraZeneca!

As we close out the year, I’m proud to celebrate the remarkable milestones we’ve achieved as part of our commitment to transform cancer treatment.

We’ve welcomed many new team members, including our colleagues at Gracell Biotechnologies.

It’s impressive to think that in just over 5 years, since AstraZeneca began working in this field, we’ve grown our team to 900 dedicated individuals, who are driving innovation across cell therapy.

Moments I am most proud of this year:

• Our acquisition of Gracell: welcoming new talent and accelerating our haematology and immunology cell therapy strategy.
• Exciting data at ASCO showcasing the potential of our armoring technology research to address cell therapy treatment challenges in solid tumor.
• Scaling up our cell therapy manufacturing capabilities, including announcing our new site in Rockville.
• Introducing TITAN [Target Induced T-cell Activating Nanobodies], our next-generation CD8-guideded T-cell engager platform, designed for potentially enhanced specificity against cancer cells.

Looking to the future I’m excited by the promise of innovations across the field, including allogeneics and in vivo CAR-T, advancements in T-cell engagers, and the emerging potential of cell therapy in immunology.

A huge thank you to everyone at AstraZeneca, Gracell, and our collaborators at Cellectis and AbelZeta for your invaluable contributions. Here’s to continued growth in this dynamic and promising field!”

Mark Cobbold

Mark Cobbold is the Senior Vice President of IO Discovery and Cell Therapy Oncology at AstraZeneca. He is also the scientific co-founder of Gritstone Oncology, GigaMune and Revitope. He earned his PhD from the University of Birmingham.