June President's Message: Mentoring a Generation of Researchers, a Conversation with Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg

Dear Colleagues,

Before I announce this month’s fireside chat companion, I wanted to make sure you all have had the opportunity to view the recently published diversity panel discussion on barriers to Asians and Pacific Islanders in medicine and research. This program, conducted in collaboration with the Chinese American Hematologic and Oncologist Network (CAHON) and the Indo-American Cancer Association (IACA), was completed in conjunction with the SITC Diversity and Inclusion Task Force’s efforts to raise awareness of barriers that exist within our field for under-represented minorities. Such conversations can be a tremendous learning tool for leaders in institutions around the world, and I look forward to our society continuing the discussion on this and other related topics into the future. Please click here to view the panel discussion.

June is Cancer Immunotherapy Month™, and I could not think of a better scientist and person to host for this month’s fireside chat than Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD. Dr. Rosenberg is a Senior Investigator in the Surgery Branch at the National Cancer Institute with more than 40 years of experience. You can click the link in the preceding sentence to view his official biography, but as you all likely know already, Dr. Rosenberg is among the most influential scientists in our field’s history. He has been – and continues to be – a mentor to countless researchers through the years, including myself. To recognize his contributions to the field, SITC last year established the Rosenberg Scholars Award, an honor he and I discussed in our chat.

I pulled out a small portion of my discussion with Dr. Rosenberg and inserted below for the purposes of this message, but I highly recommend viewing the entire chat on the SITC YouTube channel here.

Myself: What do you think the future holds (for cancer care) 10, 20, 30 years from now? …What do you think the treatments will be then?

Dr. Rosenberg: So we’ve had surgery with us for over 2,000 years, there are Egyptian papyri that talk about cancer being cut out. We’ve had chemotherapy, which we date to chemical warfare research during the Second World War in 1942, where nitrogen mustard caused laboratory workers to be exposed accidentally, would develop lymphopenias that led to the first application of chemotherapy for cancer. Radiation therapy dated from the year after (Wilhelm) Roentgen discovered x-rays in 1895, so we’ve had these treatments around and they’ve constantly been improved over time, but these have been tiny improvements.

We’re confronted today still with the situation that tells us that if you have metastatic cancer from anyone of these solid epithelial tumors, you’re not going to be cured by anything that’s now available. But we have examples with checkpoint modulators, you can get durable responses, with immunotherapy durable responses, and I would imagine all three of those original treatments will continue to be improved.

The discussion featured a number of topics, including his background and interest in cancer research, the state of cancer vaccines, words of wisdom for young investigators and much more. I hope you all enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Thanks again to Dr. Rosenberg for joining for this month’s fireside chat.

Sincerely,

 

Patrick Hwu, MD

SITC President

President's Message - September 2017

Dear Colleagues,

On Aug. 30, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved tisagenlecleucel, a chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR T) therapy directed against CD19, for certain pediatric and young adult patients with a form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). As the first gene therapy to receive FDA approval, this is a major breakthrough and represents the culmination of years of work from researchers and clinicians in the field of cancer immunotherapy.

Through educational opportunities and the promotion of collaboration among clinicians and scientists from around the world, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) serves as a driving force behind recent progress in cellular therapies. For example, abstract presentations and informational sessions highlighting the latest research on tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, gene transfer technology and adoptive cellular therapies have been a mainstay in our meetings for years.

Key leaders in the field – including Carl June, MD; Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD; and Michel Sadelain, MD – have used the platform of the SITC Annual Meeting to present their research. Dedicated sessions have covered topics addressing issues spanning basic science and clinical aspects of immune cell-based therapy, including: the engineering of signaling constructs and of vectors to increase the efficiency of gene transfer; the identification of target cells; optimization of culture growth factors, ways to detect the presence of cells and their longevity in vivo; as well as regulatory aspects of utilizing cellular therapies in the clinic.

Building on the excitement of the recent FDA approval, Stephan Grupp, MD, PhD will deliver a highly anticipated keynote address on the CAR T revolution in leukemia at the SITC 2017 Annual Meeting in National Harbor, Md. In addition, the final day of the program will feature a session on “Genetically Modified Cell Therapy” co-chaired by Carl H. June, MD; Marcela V. Maus, MD, PhD; and Helen E. Heslop, MD.

There is still so much more to come for our field. We look forward to seeing you all at SITC 2017 to learn about the next exciting breakthroughs in the field of cancer immunology and immunotherapy.

Best Wishes,

Lisa H. Butterfield, PhD

SITC President