Rimas Orentas, PhD

Dr. Orentas has extensive experience in CAR T-based immunotherapy approaches to cancer therapy, and his research has been at the forefront of T-cell based adoptive immunotherapy. Dr. Orentas is Director of the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research and a Principal Investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and a Professor Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He has also served as Scientific Director of Lentigen Technology, Inc., a Miltenyi Biotec company, and as an Associate Scientist in the Pediatric Oncology Branch of the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Orentas received his Ph.D. from the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. While there, he held post-doctoral and Research Associate positions in the Oncology Center, followed by a 12-year academic career at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he rose to rank of Associate Professor with a primary appointment in the Department of Pediatrics, Section of Hematology-Oncology. He also held appointments in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.