Christine Brown, Ph.D.
Member, Cell Therapy Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Christine Brown is the Heritage Provider Network Professor in Immunotherapy in the Departments of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation and Immuno-Oncology at City of Hope. Over the past 18 years, her research has focused on advancing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for the treatment of cancer. As Deputy Director of the T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratories (TCTRL), Dr. Brown provides scientific oversight for TCTRL translational programs to accelerate the phase I testing of CAR T cell therapy for hematological malignancies and for solid tumors. Over the past decade, she has led and built multi-disciplinary teams for CAR T cell GMP manufacturing, quality control release, patient correlative studies and regulatory protocol management. Dr. Brown’s laboratory focuses on treatment of malignant brain tumors. Her efforts to develop glioblastoma-targeted CAR T cells, improve T cell manufacturing, and optimize routes of T cell delivery have led to the initiation of several first-in-human clinical trials, including clinical testing of IL13Rα2-, HER2- and CLTX-directed CAR T cell therapy for the treatment of glioblastoma. This clinical experience is revealing important insights into the optimization of CAR T cells for the treatment of brain tumors. Dr. Brown’s ongoing research efforts also aim to develop strategies to limit tumor antigen escape and to overcome the suppressive tumor microenvironment, critical challenges limiting the effectiveness of CAR T cell therapy for treatment of solid tumors.
Dr. Brown received her doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a Leukemia & Lymphoma Scholar during her post-doctoral fellowship at Pennsylvania State University. Her research has been published in New England Journal of Medicine, Science Translational Medicine, Cancer Discovery, Clinical Cancer Research, and other notable journals, as well as featured by many news and magazine outlets including National Public Radio (NPR), O Magazine and US News and World Report. Dr. Brown has more than ten patents in the CAR T cell field and her discoveries have been foundational for the start of two publically traded biotechnology companies.