NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MD Becker Partners will hold its second annual Cancer Immunotherapy: A Long-Awaited Reality Conference on Thursday, October 6 at the New York Academy of Medicine in New York City. The single-day conference event unites key opinion leaders, industry executives, and other stakeholders to engage in discussions, exchange information, and highlight opportunities in the field of cancer immunotherapy.
"We look forward to building upon the success of our inaugural event, which attracted over 200 participants, and thank our generous sponsors – JMP Securities, Thompson Hine LLP, ROTH Capital Partners, and Cantor Fitzgerald – for helping to make this year's conference possible," said Michael Becker, founder and senior partner at MD Becker Partners.
The program includes a unique line-up of presentations by more than a dozen companies with cancer immunotherapy programs in development, including: Agenus Inc. (AGEN), AgonOx (private), Antigen Express Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Generex (GNBT), AVAX Technologies, Inc. (AVXT), Bavarian Nordic (BAVA.CO), BioSante Pharmaceuticals (BPAX), Biovest International, Inc. (BVTI), Celldex Therapeutics (CLDX), Idera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (IDRA), ImmunoCellular Therapeutics Ltd (IMUC), Inovio Pharmaceuticals (INO), Jennerex, Inc. (private), Northwest Biotherapeutics (NWBO), Provectus (PVCT), and RXi Pharmaceuticals (RXII).
At the heart of the conference are down-to-business plenary sessions and panel discussions, which include the following topics:
-- Panel discussions
- The first active immunotherapy for cancer: What went right and wrong, lessons to be learned, and will it taint the field of immunotherapy?
- Adjuvants in immunotherapy: Often overlooked, adjuvants can be an essential part of an effective vaccine to help elicit strong and durable immune responses.
- Wall Street perspectives on the field of immunotherapy
- Accelerating cancer immunotherapy development
-- Plenary sessions
- Recent progress with peptide approaches in immunotherapy
- Poxvirus approaches to immunotherapy
- Advances in immunotherapy for glioma
- Combination approaches in immunotherapy
The program concludes with a networking reception from 5:15pm to 6:30pm.
Speakers at the conference include:
- Garo Armen, Agenus Inc.
- Sudhir Agrawal, D. Phil., F.R.S.C., Idera Pharmaceuticals
- Reni J. Benjamin, Ph.D., Rodman & Renshaw, LLC
- David Berd, M.D., Cancer Treatment Centers of America
- Faith Charles, Thompson Hine LLP
- Charles C. Duncan, Ph.D., JMP Securities LLC
- Frank T. Gentile, Ph.D., Hambrecht & Quist Capital Management
- Carl Gordon, Ph.D., C.F.A., OrbiMed
- James Gulley, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.P., National Cancer Institute
- Tibor Keler, Ph.D., Celldex Therapeutics
- Reiner Laus, M.D., Bavarian Nordic
- Fern P. O'Brian, Thompson Hine LLP
- Joseph Pantginis, Ph.D., ROTH Capital Partners
- Andrew T. Parsa, M.D., Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco
- Col. George E. Peoples, M.D., F.A.C.S., Brooke Army Medical Center
- Bernard Peperstraete, M.D., NGN Capital
- David Sable, M.D., Special Situations Life Sciences Fund
- Rajeev Shah, RA Capital Management, LLC
- Susan Slovin, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.P., Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
- Y. Katherine Xu, Ph.D., William Blair & Company LLC
Pre-registration for the conference is required; no walk-ins will be accepted. To register, or for more information, please visit the conference website at www.regonline.com/mdbpartners.
About MD Becker Partners
MD Becker Partners LLC is a boutique management and strategy consulting firm focusing on both public and private companies in the life science industry. As a strategic advisor and partner, the firm provides a full range of services to help clients increase visibility, unlock stakeholder value and access resources to grow their business. To accomplish this, MD Becker Partners integrates relations, strategy, and operational capabilities and applies them to carefully conceived and expertly enacted tactics. For more information visit www.mdbpartners.com.