MilliporeSigma Presents 'Future Forum' at Boston's HUBweek 2017

BURLINGTON, Mass., Oct. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MilliporeSigma, the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, today announced that it will host a panel discussion, "The Personalized Cell Therapy Challenge: A Race Against Time," featuring leading cell and gene therapy experts from academia, hospitals and industry, on Thursday, October 12, 3:30 p.m. at the HUBweek Green Dome at City Hall Plaza in Boston.

The technology, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, collects a patient's immune cells and re-programs them to target their specific type of cancer. Advancement of this potentially lifesaving treatment requires an alliance among physicians, hospitals, biopharmaceutical manufacturers and the life science industry. The panel will discuss achievements to date, as well as looming challenges and the path forward to success.

"At MilliporeSigma, our purpose is to collaborate with the global scientific community to solve the toughest problems in life science," said Udit Batra, CEO, MilliporeSigma. "Supporting and participating in HUBweek is an extension of what we do every day. It is an honor to be on stage with distinguished leaders in science, medicine and academia."

The panel features:

• Dr. Bruce Levine, Barbara and Edward Netter professor in Cancer Gene Therapy at University of Pennsylvania
• Dr. David Williams, Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Boston Children's Hospital; President, Dana/Farber Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center; Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Boston Children's Hospital; Leland Fikes Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
• Dr. Marcela Maus, director of Cellular Immunotherapy at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center
• Shashi Murthy, Ph.D., professor of chemical engineering of Northeastern University
• Geoff Hodge, Chief Technical Officer of Unum Therapeutics
• Dave Backer, Ph.D., head of Gene Editing & Novel Modality Commercial Development at MilliporeSigma

The cell therapy panel will be part of HUBweek, Boston's annual civic collaboration and weeklong festival bringing together the most creative and inventive people from around the world who are making an impact on art, science and technology.

MilliporeSigma supports "Future Forum," a featured HUBweek event that will focus on the accelerating pace of advances in science and technology. HUBweek is a civic collaboration of Harvard, MIT, Mass General and The Boston Globe. 

The festival will include various multi-sensory, interactive projects, including MilliporeSigma's Curiosity Cube™, a hands-on, mobile science lab. The cube will be at 1 City Hall Square, Boston, where HUBweek visitors will be able to tour the 22x10-foot, retrofitted shipping container, which has been transformed into an engaging learning environment for interactive experiences and science lessons. The cube will be open at HUBweek Oct. 12-14 from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 15 from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

The Curiosity Cube™ will also be at MilliporeSigma's new Life Science Center – Burlington with students on Oct. 11 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Other key locations include Marshall Simonds Middle School in Burlington on Oct. 18, Boston Children's Museum on Oct. 21 and Wharf District Park in Boston on Oct. 28.

The visit of MilliporeSigma's Curiosity Cube™ to City Hall Plaza continues the science lab's U.S. tour — one way the company is striving to spark interest in science, technology, engineering and math careers. The Cube will visit 19 cities this year, with employees from 35 sites volunteering.

More details on the MilliporeSigma "Future Forum" events at HUBweek are available at https://hubweek.org/. HUBweek is designed to foster collaboration to inspire innovation—connecting great ideas coming out of Boston with more ideas from around the world. MilliporeSigma's sponsorship of HUBweek reflects and reinforces its commitment to advance research and innovation in life science.

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About the Life Science Business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
The Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada, has 20,000 employees and 60 manufacturing sites worldwide, with a portfolio of more than 300,000 products enabling scientific discovery. Udit Batra is the global chief executive officer of MilliporeSigma.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany completed its $17 billion acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich in November 2015, creating a leader in the $125 billion global life science industry.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is a leading company for innovative and top-quality high-tech products in healthcare, life science and performance materials. The company has five businesses – Biopharmaceuticals, Consumer Health, Allergopharma, Life Science and Performance Materials – and generated sales of €15 billion in 2016. Around 50,000 employees work in 66 countries to improve the quality of life for patients, to foster the success of customers and to help meet global challenges.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company – since 1668, the company has stood for innovation, business success and responsible entrepreneurship. Holding an approximately 70 percent interest, the founding family remains the majority owner of the company to this day. The company holds the global rights to the name and the trademark "Merck" internationally except for the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials.

SOURCE MilliporeSigma