Presenters:  Patrick McConville Ph.D. | VP, Non-clinical Research Services and Professor of Practice, Radiology, Invicro

Nina Timberlake Ph.D. | Senior Scientist, Poseida Therapeutics

Rapid, precise and non-invasive in vivo assessment of gene therapy and anti-cancer efficacy in deep tissue tumor models is feasible through the use of luciferase reporters and bioluminescence imaging (BLI).

For more than a decade, luciferase reporters in tumor cell lines have enabled imaging of deep tissue mouse tumor models, and BLI is therefore the go-to-method for quantifying tumor growth and treatment pharmacodynamics in orthotopic, hematologic and metastasis models of cancer.

More recently, with large scale discovery and development of gene therapy technologies, BLI is routinely  used in preclinical studies to evaluate the performance and biodistribution of these entities and their genetic payloads. This includes lipid nanoparticle and virus approaches to gene therapy, including particular prominence in rare disease applications. BLI gene therapy applications also include CAR-T and oncolytic virus therapies in oncology.  

Since luciferase reporters can be relatively easily and effectively incorporated into these biologic platforms, BLI has become a go-to- platform for screening their performance in vivo, facilitating later translation. Futhermore, luciferase can be used to test gene reporter platforms ahead of potential clinical translation using translational gene reporters such as HSV-TK.

In this webinar, Dr. McConville will provide an overview of state of the art applications that utilize luciferase reporters and bioluminescent imaging including gene delivery and oncolytic virus examples. Dr. Timberlake will showcase bioluminescence imaging based screening approaches to interrogate CAR-T cell efficacy, tracking and activation.

After this webinar you will understand:

• How luciferase is used as a sensitive gene reporter for cell and biologics detection by in vivo BLI
• how to perform efficient and quantitative in vivo screening of:
  • Gene delivery
  • Cell tracking including CAR-T cells
  • Efficacy in deep tissue tumor models