 Thompson holds more than 30 patents related to immunotherapy and apoptosis, and is a founder of three biotechnology companies.Patents arising from Thompson’s research describing the co-stimulatory/inhibitory properties of CD28/CTLA-4, in collaboration with Carl June and Jeffrey Bluestone, were licensed for the development of Abatacept (Orencia) for autoimmune diseases and for use in T cell cloning and CAR T cell production.Thompson’s work with Stanley Korsmeyer establishing the existence of three classes of Bcl-2-related proteins and defining their role in apoptosis led to the development of ABT-263 (navitoclax) and ABT-199 (venetoclax), recently FDA-approved for certain patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).