President's Message - November 2020

Dear Colleagues,

Only a few days remain before The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer’s 35^th Anniversary Annual Meeting & Pre-Conference Programs (SITC 2020) begins on Nov. 9, 2020. This will be our first virtual meeting, and I anticipate that all the preparation and hard work will produce the best possible meeting experience for our members and our many colleagues who will join us from around the globe. I also want to extend a warm welcome to the more than 1,300 researchers and clinicians who joined the SITC family in 2020 and I look forward to working together with you in the future.

The Annual Meeting is the highlight of the year for our society and there are always many reasons to attend, but the focus is on the new and exciting data from research spanning across the entire spectrum of cancer immunotherapy. Oral and poster presentations will cover a broad range of topics including tumor immunobiology, the tumor microenvironment, mechanisms of response and resistance to immune modulators, novel immunotherapy strategies in the clinic, and emerging clinical data from new agents and combinations.

On behalf of the society, I extend our congratulations to this year’s nominees for the Presidential Award, who will present their work on Friday, Nov. 13, beginning at 1:30 p.m. EST. These abstracts were selected from a large group of submissions and represent the work of highly motivated and talented early career investigators. This year’s nominees are:

• Defne Bayik, PhD – Cleveland Clinic
• Emily Hsiue, MD – Johns Hopkins University
• Nils-Petter Rudqvist, PhD – The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
• Michal Sheffer, PhD – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

To mitigate some of the disadvantages of a virtual meeting, opportunities were created within the meeting to enhance connections with presenters. I invite you to attend the virtual poster sessions starting Nov. 9 at 8 a.m. EST hall. In these sessions, attendees can chat in real time with poster presenters during the following designated poster presentation hours:

• Odd-numbered posters: Wednesday, Nov. 11, from 5:15–5:45 p.m. EST, and Friday, Nov. 13, from 4:40–5:10 p.m. EST
• Even-numbered posters: Thursday, Nov. 12, from 4:50–5:20 p.m. EST, and Saturday, Nov. 14, from 1–1:30 p.m. EST

For a complete look at this year’s abstracts, please visit the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC), our society’s open access, peer-reviewed online journal, to view the abstract supplement that will be published as a preprint on Monday morning. Also, we extend our congratulations to JITC Editor-in-Chief Pedro J. Romero, MD, and the countless other editors, reviewers and contributors, on the recent news that the journal increased its impact factor to 10.252! This is a remarkable accomplishment in such a short period of time, and Dr. Romero has initiated an ambitious agenda to further increase the value and impact of the Journal.

The SITC Annual Meeting would not be the same without The CheckPoints party, so join in to hear them on Friday, Nov. 13, at 6 p.m. EST (through ZOOM) for a special happy hour. Don’t forget to order your limited edition T-shirt and CheckPoints Mask to support the Forward Fund.

Finally, please remember that everyone registered for SITC 2020 can now explore the SITC 2020 virtual environment. The preview continues prior to the opening of our pre-conference programs on Monday morning. Please click here to set up your profile, access the virtual exhibit hall and plan your schedule for next week.

Thank you all for your commitment to SITC. Look forward to seeing you online next week!

Sincerely, 

Mario Sznol, MD

SITC President

President's Message - August 2020

Dear Colleagues,

By this time, you are probably already aware that we will hold our society’s 35^th Annual Meeting & Pre-Conference Programs (SITC 2020) as a fully virtual event. We’ve made several recent announcements involving SITC 2020, including:

• Online registration is now open, please register today
• SITC members can attend the entire SITC 2020 for free – join SITC or renew your membership today
• The dates for SITC 2020 are finalized, beginning and ending a day earlier, now Nov. 9–14, 2020
• Deadlines to submit abstracts to SITC 2020 have been extended to Aug. 25, 2020, by 5 p.m. PDT – click here to learn more about SITC 2020 abstract information

Our preference was to find a way to safely convene in person. However, the coronavirus pandemic is still active, the course of the pandemic over the next several months is difficult to predict, and the safety of our members, their families, and our patients is our highest priority. Therefore, the decision to go virtual became necessary. We understand that a virtual event removes the prospect of the invaluable, sometimes spontaneous in-person conversations that can lead to important insights, collaborations, and for some members, important career opportunities.  But we hope and are working very hard to make the 2020 Virtual Annual Scientific Meeting a truly unique, highly productive and beneficial experience for all of this year’s attendees. And perhaps by going virtual we can expand the opportunity to connect to a much broader group of our members around the world.

To provide researchers with more time to prepare their SITC 2020 abstracts for our reimagined virtual meeting, we will extend the submission deadline for regular and Young Investigator Award abstracts, late-breaking abstract applications and presentation applications for the Immunotherapy Resistances and Failure program until Aug. 25, 2020, at 5 p.m. PDT. This extension provides nearly a month of additional time for colleagues to prepare their work for viewing in the virtual poster hall and potentially as a recorded presentation. Click here to view the updated abstract timeline and related important dates for SITC 2020.

As this is SITC’s 35^th Anniversary Annual Meeting, one of the many highlights will be three keynote opening addresses from highly accomplished scientists in our field. I have the privilege to introduce several of the SITC 2020 faculty, including the following keynote presenters:

Richard V. Smalley, MD Memorial Award and Lectureship:

• Gordon Freeman, PhD (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) – “The PD-L1/PD-1 Pathway: Discovery and New Insights”
• Lieping Chen, MD, PhD (Yale School of Medicine) – “Why Were We Interested in Immunity Within the Tumor Microenvironment in the 1990s?”
• Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD (Harvard Medical School) – “Discovery of New IO Targets and Mechanisms Leveraging CRISPR”

 Keynote Address:

• Elizabeth M. Jaffee, MD (Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University) – “Turning Immunologically Quiescent Tumors into Immune Responsive Cancers”

35^th Anniversary Keynote Address:

• Helen E. Heslop, MD (Baylor College of Medicine) – “T cell Therapy of Cancer”

These presentations and many more, including late-breaking research, reflect the very high scientific quality of the SITC 2020 meeting. You can access the meeting without cost if you are an SITC member,  so if you have not yet done so, join the SITC family or renew your membership for 2020 and beyond by  completing the SITC 2020 online registration.

Planning for SITC 2020 consumed much of our leadership’s recent discussions, but we continue to focus on the long-term future of the society. In mid-July, I was honored to welcome a collection of respected SITC member leaders, representing a variety of professional backgrounds and interests, to the annual SITC strategic planning retreat. The meeting was hosted on the Zoom platform to ensure the safety of all participants. This esteemed group engaged in productive discussions that outlined future society outputs for key scientific issues; considered SITC’s approach to future live and virtual educational programs in our new global environment; and addressed ways to increase our society’s commitment to racial and ethnic diversity. As always, I was impressed by the thoughtfulness of our leaders in addressing opportunities and potential problems for our Society.

An important area of SITC strategic focus is policy and advocacy, and these efforts are particularly important now to ensure continued progress of the immunotherapy community through the global pandemic. SITC-drafted text was incorporated into the Fiscal Year 2021 U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Subcommittee Bill regarding annual financial appropriations for the U.S Food and Drug Administration. Thanks to the efforts of our SITC Policy Committees, 2020 marks the third consecutive year SITC was able to place congressional language which communicates SITC member priorities to the FDA. We invite you to learn more about SITC's policy and advocacy efforts here, and view the FY21 FDA appropriations language focused on combination immunotherapies here.

This year has been a particularly difficult year for everyone with new and unexpected challenges. I would like to thank the entire SITC family–my colleagues on the Board of Directors, Executive Committee, SITC committees and task forces, staff and many others–for your continued dedication and unflinching support of our society. It is this collective effort that will ensure our Society and our field of a bright future.

Sincerely,

Mario Sznol, MD

SITC President

President's Message - July 2020

Dear Colleagues,

As I hope many of you saw recently, SITC announced its intentions to transition the upcoming 35^th Anniversary Annual Meeting & Pre-Conference Programs (SITC 2020) on Nov. 10–15, 2020, from an in-person conference to a fully virtual event. The decision, made with the full support of the SITC Executive Committee and Annual Meeting organizers, will allow our society to convene safely amid the global coronavirus pandemic while sharing and celebrating the continued progress achieved in the cancer immunotherapy field.

SITC 2020 reimagined as a fully virtual experience will ensure the health and safety of our participants and their patients while providing new, unique opportunities to connect with an expanded global audience. In celebration of our society’s 35^th anniversary, we are excited to offer free SITC 2020 registration to all SITC members. Online registration for SITC 2020 reimagined will open in the coming weeks. Join the SITC family or renew your membership today to ensure your eligibility for free SITC 2020 participation. Stay tuned for much more in the coming weeks as we announce new and exciting features of SITC 2020 reimagined as a virtual event.

While the coronavirus pandemic has greatly affected our lives, professionally and personally, it is vital we continue the mission of our great society to improve cancer patient outcomes by advancing the science, development and application of cancer immunology and immunotherapy. One of the means by which SITC strives to achieve this mission is through programs that provide funding and recognize the scientific achievements of our field’s early career scientists. The pandemic has undoubtedly impacted funding for young investigators, and thus, such continued support from SITC is more important than ever. In June, we recognized a record-breaking number of early career scientists as recipients of our society’s 2020 Postdoctoral Cancer Immunotherapy Fellowships and Award.

Thanks to the continued and generous support of our industry partners—Amgen, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech, Inc. and Merck—SITC was able to award six early career scientists with fellowships, totaling $600,000 in one- and two-year awards. In a new collaboration with NanoString Technologies, SITC was also able to offer an award providing access to the company’s spatial profiling technology to further research.

I would like to congratulate this year’s recipients of the 2020 Postdoctoral Cancer Immunotherapy Fellowships and Award:

• SITC-Merck Cancer Immunotherapy Clinical Fellowship: Joseph Clara, MD – National Institutes of Health (NIH)

• SITC-AstraZeneca Immunotherapy in Lung Cancer Clinical Fellowship: Jacob Kaufman, MD, PhD – Duke University Medical Center

• SITC-Amgen Cancer Immunotherapy in Hematologic Malignancies Fellowship: Suman Paul, MBBS, PhD – Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

• SITC-Bristol Myers Squibb Postdoctoral Cancer Immunotherapy Translational Fellowship: Li Qiang, PhD – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School

• SITC-NanoString Technologies Spatial Profiling Award: Todd Triplett, PhD – University of Texas Dell Medical School

• SITC-Genentech Women in Cancer Immunotherapy Fellowship: Natalie Vokes, MD – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

• SITC's Holbrook Kohrt, MD, PhD Cancer Immunotherapy Translational Memorial Fellowship (Sponsored by Genentech): Kipp Weiskopf, MD, PhD – Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research 

To learn more about these individuals and their research, please visit our website. Thank you to all of this year’s SITC Fellowships and Award applicants and sponsors! Please look for a host of new funding opportunities in January.

I would also like to congratulate the 2020 National Cancer Institute (NCI) Immunotherapy Fellowship recipient, John Shin, MD, from Mayo Clinic Rochester. Dr. Shin will be exposed to multiple clinical immunotherapeutic approaches and key opinion leaders in the field of cancer immunotherapy at NCI’s Center for Cancer Research. The NCI Immunotherapy Fellowship is co-sponsored by the NCI of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and SITC and made possible in part by an educational grant from EMD Serono.

SITC will honor this year’s awardees, along with many other young investigators, during our awards ceremony at the 35^th Anniversary Annual Meeting. We will also recognize an additional 35 early career scientists as part of our society’s Young Investigator Awards. These accolades, which include the highly coveted Presidential Award, reward excellence in SITC Annual Meeting oral abstract and poster presentations. We are also eager to recognize the numerous basic scientists, translational researchers and clinicians working to improve cancer patient outcomes.

As a reminder, regular abstracts, Young Investigator Award abstracts, late-breaking abstracts and Immunotherapy Resistance and Failure Pre-Conference Program presentation applications are due by 5 p.m. PDT on Friday, July 31. For a complete listing of SITC 2020 abstract categories, which now includes research on COVID-19 and immunotherapy, please click here.

Finally, I would like to share proudly that the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC) increased its Impact Factor this year to 9.913. This Impact Factor makes JITC the highest ranked fully open access immunology journal and places JITC in top 8 percent of all journals published in the oncology and immunology categories. Congratulations to JITC Editor-in-Chief Pedro Romero, MD, the JITC Editorial Board, its vast collection of reviewers and staff for this honor.

Please consider submitting your research to JITC or becoming a reviewer as the journal furthers its mark as a respected source for research in oncology.

Sincerely,

Mario Sznol, MD

SITC President

President's Message - February 2020

Dear Colleagues,

One of the most important priorities for SITC and for our field is to support and train early career investigators. In 2020, we are offering six SITC Fellowships and a new, unique award, totaling $600,000 in funding.

The six fellowships are possible thanks to the strong financial commitment of our industry partners. We are again able to honor the memory of one of our members, Holbrook Kohrt, MD, PhD, via the Cancer Immunotherapy Translational Memorial Fellowship. This year’s award is the third such fellowship in remembrance of Dr. Kohrt, an assistant professor at Stanford University, known for his commitment to discover and develop novel therapies to enhance anti-tumor immunity. You can read our society’s tribute and view photos from our 2016 dedication ceremony here. For a complete listing of the available 2020 SITC Fellowships, please click here or continue reading this edition of the Immune Monitor. Applications are now open and due by Feb. 28.

SITC will also offer an additional award opportunity, the SITC-NanoString Technologies Spatial Profiling Award. This new research award will be given to a young investigator who will leverage NanoString Technologies’ GeoMx™ Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) to perform highly multiplexed spatial profiling of RNA and proteins. Click here to learn more and apply to this award (also with a Feb. 28 deadline).

In 2020, SITC will be holding its 35^th Anniversary Annual Meeting & Pre-Conference Programs (Nov. 10–14 in National Harbor, Md.). As the field and our meeting has grown, so has the need for several more focused meetings throughout the year on key emerging areas of interest and importance. We’ve seen remarkable advances in tumor-targeted immunotherapy technology including CAR-T cells and antibody-drug conjugates and anticipate that identifying additional tumor-specific cell surface targets will further enable development of these types of agents. This year we will hold our first meeting on Interrogating the Tumor-Specific Surfaceome for Immune Targeting Workshop, taking place April 23–24 in San Diego (click here to register now). The tumor-specific surfaceome workshop will provide opportunities for investigators to present their research and will allow attendees to share their work with fellow experts in the field. Those whose abstracts are not selected for oral presentation will have the opportunity to present their work as a poster. Abstracts for this workshop are due by Feb. 28 at 5 p.m. PST. Click here to submit your abstract. Encore presentations are welcome!

Beyond the science, SITC will be expanding its efforts to promote professional development for its members. Following last year’s successful inaugural event, the society’s Women in Cancer Immunotherapy Network (WIN) Leadership Institute returns this summer, and will grow to two programs, one in Seattle (July 13–14) and one in Chicago (Aug. 3–4). Women interested in applying to attend either program are invited to submit an application by March 9 at 11:59 p.m. EST.

Finally, I would like to offer well-deserved congratulations to the SITC members, led by SITC Past President Howard L. Kaufman, MD, FACS, for their recent manuscript, Defining Current Gaps in Quality Measures for Cancer Immunotherapy: Consensus Report from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 2019 Quality Summit, as published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC). The article addresses optimal application of cancer immunotherapy for patient benefit, and serves as SITC’s initial formal effort to further define and standardize quality delivery of cancer immunotherapy. I look forward to our society’s continued work in this important area.

Sincerely,

Mario Sznol, MD
SITC President