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On episode 117, Host Erin Harris welcomes Paul Perreault, Strategic Advisor, Board Member and former CEO of CSL, who shares insights from his decade leading the company through global expansion and the COVID-19 pandemic. Perreault highlights the importance of patient-centered culture, strategic focus, and adaptive leadership for cell and gene therapy innovators. He offers practical advice on building a values-driven culture that connects employees to patients, the importance of focusing on core competencies to attract capital, and the necessity of continuous leadership development, even advocating for mentorship and emotional intelligence as growth drivers in fast-evolving organizations.

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In episode 116 of Cell & Gene: The Podcast, Host Erin Harris talks to Dr. Arun Upadhyay, Chief Scientific officer, Head of Research and Development at Ocugen to discuss how the company’s modifier gene therapy platform is redefining treatment possibilities for inherited retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, Stargardt disease, and geographic atrophy. Dr. Upadhyay explains how Ocugen’s gene-agnostic approach differs from traditional single-gene therapies by targeting shared disease pathways to preserve photoreceptors and slow vision loss across diverse genetic mutations. He also shares key lessons learned from advancing OCU400, the first modifier gene therapy to receive a broad FDA indication for retinitis pigmentosa, including challenges in clinical trial design, endpoint selection, and manufacturing scalability.

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Episode 115 of Cell & Gene: The Podcast features Host Erin Harris' talk with Aliya Omer, Vice President and Global Head of Hematology and Cell Therapy at AstraZeneca. Omer shares valuable insights from her rich experience leading cell therapy development across multiple top companies. She highlights the critical importance of collaboration by breaking down silos across research, manufacturing, regulatory, and commercial teams to deliver innovative therapies efficiently. She also discusses AZ’s diverse and ambitious cell therapy portfolio, encompassing autologous CAR-T, TCR-T, in vivo gene therapies, and regulatory T-cell therapies. She candidly addresses current challenges in manufacturing scalability, patient access, and healthcare system readiness and describes how AZ is prioritizing fast manufacturing platforms and ecosystem-wide partnerships to surmount these hurdles. 

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On episode 114 of Cell & Gene: The Podcast, Host Erin Harris talks to Brian Culley, CEO of Lineage Cell Therapeutics, about advancing cell therapy beyond oncology and into transformative treatments for conditions such as spinal cord injury and blindness. Culley shares how Lineage’s allogeneic, off-the-shelf approach, anchored by its OPC1 program, aims to replace lost or damaged cells to restore function, starting with patients who have plateaued after chronic spinal cord injury. He details the DOSED study’s innovative delivery device and thaw-and-inject formulation, both designed to simplify administration, enhance safety, and improve patient access. Harris and Culley also explore Lineage's broader vision for commercial viability in cell transplantation and its collaborative work with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to drive awareness, research, and investment in spinal cord injury therapies.

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Welcome to Episode 113 of Cell & Gene: The Podcast. Host Erin Harris is joined by Thorsten Gorba, Ph.D., VP Process Development at Aspen Neuroscience to explore how the company is advancing the field of cell therapy manufacturing. Aspen Neuroscience stands at the forefront of integrating machine vision and AI/ML to assess induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) colony quality by offering a transformative approach to move beyond the subjective nature of manual evaluation. Dr. Gorba discusses how these technologies bolster reproducibility and scalability and help reduce variability in starting materials. He also covers the regulatory angle, including how the FDA is evaluating digital quality control tools. 

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On episode 112 of Cell & Gene: The Podcast, Michael Quigley, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Global Head of Research at Sanofi talks to Host Erin Harris about the establishment of Sanofi’s dedicated Genomic Medicine Unit (GMU). Dr. Quigley emphasizes in vivo delivery and process optimization to improve patient experience, scalability, and global access. They discuss the importance of partnerships with academia, industry, and regulators, and Dr. Quigley discusses how advances in AI are accelerating research efficiency, molecule optimization, and experimental design across Sanofi’s portfolio. He also points to the breakthroughs likely to revolutionize immunology and gene therapy, such as solutions to pre-existing immunity barriers, improved tissue-specific delivery, regulated and reversible gene therapies, and more precise gene editing. 

Cell & Gene: The Podcast and Cell & Gene are part of the Life Science Connect family of resources.

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On episode 111 of Cell & Gene: The Podcast, Host Erin Harris talks to Ernexa Therapeutics' President and CEO, Sanjeev Luther, about how the company is advancing cell therapy innovation for cancer and autoimmune disease through engineered induced pluripotent stem cell-derived mesenchymal stem cells (iMSCs). Luther shares how Ernexa’s synthetic, standardized, off-the-shelf iMSCs are designed to overcome historic hurdles in MSC therapy, including variability, scalability, and manufacturing complexity, by leveraging master cell banks, precise gene editing, and novel product engineering. He also shares insights into the process of developing pro- and anti-inflammatory iMSCs for oncology and autoimmunity.

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This is Episode 4 of "FDA Fridays," a special series from Cell & Gene: The Podcast, Chief Editor Erin Harris speaks with regulatory affairs expert Daniela Drago, Partner, NDA Partners, about how shifting FDA and CBER priorities under the current administration could influence the trajectory of cell and gene therapy development. From the impact of leadership changes and evolving policy directives to the role of funding allocations and public health priorities, Drago sheds light on what CGT developers and sponsors should be watching most closely. She explores regulatory modernization trends, including digital health integration, real-world evidence, and decentralized trial models, and offers practical guidance on how companies can best prepare for potential regulatory shifts while maintaining alignment with FDA expectations for safety, efficacy, and manufacturing rigor.

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In this episode of Cell & Gene Podcast episode, Host Erin Harris talks to Stanford School of Medicine Ph.D. student, Yuanhao Qu, about his work developing CRISPR-GPT, an AI-driven multi-agent system designed to automate genetic experimental design and data analysis, making CRISPR experiments more efficient and accessible, even for non-experts. Qu explains how CRISPR-GPT addresses key challenges such as guide design, delivery methods, off-target prediction, and protocol generation, and shares how collaborations with Princeton helped shape the tool’s architecture and evaluation. Qu also discusses Biomni, a general-purpose biomedical AI agent aimed at supporting a broad range of life science applications, and how the two systems complement each other as building blocks toward an "AI scientist" capable of accelerating discovery across biomedicine. Qu emphasizes the importance of rigorous evaluation, productivity gains, and ethical guardrails to ensure these tools are powerful yet safe for the future of biomedical research.

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This is Episode 3 of "FDA Fridays," a 4-week special series from Cell & Gene: The Podcast. Host Erin Harris talks to Bambi Grilley, Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics and the Director of Clinical Research and Early Product Development for the Center of Cell and Gene Therapy (CAGT) at Baylor College of Medicine and Chief Regulatory Officer for ISCT, a leading expert at the forefront of pediatric cell and gene therapy. Dr. Grilley shares her wealth of experience and unique perspective on the most pressing barriers to accessing transformative treatments for children, from logistical and financial challenges faced by families, to systemic and regulatory hurdles in getting therapies from the lab to the clinic.

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