G-Rex Grant Tour Raleigh

G-Rex^® Grant Tour

Supporting the Emily Whitehead Foundation

RALEIGH

Coming to Raleigh

The G-Rex Grant Program is a transformational initiative that culminated in the awarding of >300 G-Rex Grants and >$40M in resources and has resulted in a powerful coalition of organizations and individuals working to bring hope to cancer and autoimmune patients through adoptive cell and gene therapy.

In 2026, ScaleReady will host a series of 12-events around the United States with the goals of:

Event Speakers

Meet Ms. Pamela Noldner

Pamela Noldner leads the Cell Therapy Process Development team at the Marcus Center for Cellular Cures (MC3) at the Duke School of Medicine. In this role, she oversees the development, optimization, and scaleup of GMPcompliant manufacturing processes for both allogeneic and autologous cellbased therapies.Over the past ten years, her work has covered the process development from initial cell sourcing through final formulation and cryopreservation. She has helped build and implement closedsystem and automated workflows, including largescale bioreactor approaches, and has supported product characterization through ELISAs and the development of potency assays. Her team works across multiple cell types, including MSCs, TILs, CAR T cells, γδ T cells, macrophages, and NK cells, drawing on extensive experience with cordblood–derived cultures.Pamela has designed and authored IND amendment studies, authored GMP documentation such as SOPs and batch records, and led technical transfers to manufacturing and quality control groups. She also manages collaborations with academic labs and biotechnology partners.

Meet Dr. Shikhar Mehrotra

Shikhar Mehrotra leads the immunotherapy research program at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), where he holds an endowed chair in Hematology/Oncology and serves as Chair of the Department of Pharmacology & Immunology. He earned his BS in Chemistry and Biological Sciences and his MS in Microbiology from Avadh University in India, followed by a PhD in Immunology from the Post-graduate Institute of Medical Sciences and postdoctoral training in Tumor Immunology at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Over the past two decades, his work has spanned the discovery of key immunometabolic pathways — including the CD38-NAD+ axis and antioxidant regulation of T cell memory — through translational application in adoptive cell therapy. His team works across multiple T cell platforms, including CAR T cells, TILs, and Th17-programmed cells, and has secured FDA approval for a Phase I clinical trial in NHL and CLL. Dr. Mehrotra has authored numerous high-impact publications and holds multiple U.S. patents in cancer immunotherapy.

Meet Dr. Richard D. Lopez

Dr. Richard D. Lopez is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University and a physician-scientist specializing in hematologic malignancies and cellular therapy. After earning his medical degree and completing his fellowship at Stanford University, he focused his research on the clinical expansion of gamma/delta T-cells, a rare but potent subset of the immune system. As the Founder and CEO of PhosphoGam, Dr. Lopez transitioned his laboratory discoveries into a proprietary manufacturing platform. His technology enables an 80,000x expansion of T-cells, addressing the historical challenges of scalability and high production costs in immunotherapy. His work facilitates the development of "off-the-shelf" allogeneic therapies designed to be more accessible and safer for patients by eliminating the need for traditional viral vectors. Dr. Lopez’s career is defined by bridging the gap between academic research and commercial biotechnology. His current efforts at PhosphoGam focus on providing scalable, cost-effective cell therapies for both liquid and solid tumors, aiming to shift the standard of care toward mass-producible immunotherapy.

Meet Dr. Christopher Doering

Dr. Doering is the Chief Scientific Officer at Expression Therapeutics Inc and Corami Biotech Inc as well as Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University within the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center where he has led teams focused on the development and translation of cell and gene therapy technologies for over 20 years. His efforts have been highlighted in leading journals such as Nature Biotechnology and New England Journal of Medicine. He is an inventor of numerous patents for enhanced therapeutic proteins, transgenes, vectors, and delivery approaches, as well as their methods of use in cell and gene therapy. Several of these technologies have advanced into clinical development.

Meet Dr. John Powderly, II

Founder and President at Carolina BioOncology Institute and BioCytics Human Applications Lab Dr. Powderly graduated from George Mason University in 1991, then Georgetown School of Medicine in 1995, with an internship at the National Cancer Institute, Surgical Branch, Immunotherapy Service. He completed a combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics Residency at Houston Health Science Center in 1999 followed by a faculty position at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He then completed an Oncology Fellowship at UNC in 2002 focusing on immunotherapy research. Dr. Powderly’s early phase immunotherapy research has led to > 150 publications (referenced by 35,000 citations) including the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Immunotherapy, Nature, Clinical Cancer Research, Clinical Chemistry, Investigational New Drugs, and Science Translational Medicine. In 2005, he founded Carolina BioOncology Institute (CBOI) and BioCytics Human Applications Lab (B-HAL), a community-based research clinic & research lab in Huntersville North Carolina as the only independent phase I cancer center with a clean room facility for GMP cellular manufacturing at the point of care. CBOI has opened > 180 early phase clinical trials which led to 12 FDA commercially approved immunotherapy cancer drugs. CBOI serves as a Southeast regional referral hub for phase 1 clinical trial access. BioCytics serves as a nationally recognized translational lab for pre-IND enabling research focused on circulating tumor cells, cellular immunotherapy process development, device proto-type optimization, validation and upscaling for autologous cell therapy applications. Dr. Powderly’s vision for CBOI & BioCytics are to bring individualized (“bespoke”) regenerative medicines to community-based clinical trial networks with point of care manufacturing at regional human application labs.

Event Sponsors

R&D Systems — sponsor of the G-REX Grant Tour

The G-Rex Grant Tour will be co-produced by the Emily Whitehead Foundation (EWF) and all sponsorship fees will go directly to support the EWF mission “to support patients and caregivers affected by cancer and rare diseases, and advocate for all patients who can be treated with advanced therapies”.

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G-Rex® Grant Tour