Leonardo Ferreira
Founder & Chief Executive Officer Torpedo Bio
Leonardo Ferreira is an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and, by courtesy, of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology at the Medical University of South Carolina and the Hollings Cancer Center. As a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California San Francisco, he created an anti-HLA-A2 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and used CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene knock-in to replace the endogenous T cell receptor gene with this CAR gene in primary human regulatory T cells. The resulting CAR Tregs were suppressive upon recognizing HLA-A2 and trafficked to transplanted human islets. His laboratory focuses on engineered immune receptors to develop new cellular therapies.
Seminars
Tuesday 15th September 2026
Tailoring CAR-T Cell Therapies for Solid Tumors
12:00 pm
- Customizing CAR-Ts to upgrade their infiltration and survival
- Building new unexplored solid tumor targets to combat resistant tumors
- Sharing early CAR-T and metastatic treatment
Tuesday 15th September 2026
Panel Discussion: Selecting Gene Editing Strategies to Prevent Downregulation & Enhance Cell Therapy Outcomes
2:00 pm
- Compare knockout, base editing, and prime editing approaches to guide technology selection
- Evaluating alternative strategies such as gene silencing and expression modulation, to reduce biological risk while preserving functional benefit across indications
- Assessing the impact of editing strategies on genomic integrity and patient safety to balance therapeutic enhancement with longterm DNA health and regulatory confidence
