Letter from the Editor- April

Dear JITC Readers,

It is a pleasure to welcome you to this month’s JITC digest. The original research articles highlighted in this edition are fantastic examples of mechanistic insight interwoven with new strategies for intervention and vice versa—the seamless reverse translational cycle that is central to the immunotherapy field.

 

Novel targets for immunotherapy are characterized by Aiqin Gao and colleagues, who show that blocking ILT4 relieves T cell immunosenescence via ERK-dependent metabolic perturbations, as well as François Anna et al, who take aim at HLA-G with the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells against the dual function tumor-specific antigen and immune checkpoint.

 

Esther Redin and colleagues demonstrate that inhibition of the SRC-family kinase YES1 with the approved leukemia drug dasatinib decreases CD4+ Treg conversion and enhances the efficacy of PD-1 blockade in non-small cell lung cancer.

 

Another strategy to augment the anti-tumor effects of PD-1 inhibition is identified by Yoke Seng Lee et al, who establish a link between conventional type 1 dendritic cell counts and responses to immunotherapy in patients with melanoma as well as in a novel humanized mouse model.

Finally, Gino M Dettorre and colleagues validate a readily available index of hyperinflammation incorporating lymphopenia and hypoalbuminemia that predicts outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with cancer—research that hints at interventions to prevent severe disease and nicely complements recently published articles in JITC’s ongoing COVID-19 and Cancer Immunotherapy Review Series.

 

Best regards,

Pedro J. Romero, MD
Editor-in-Chief, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

To view the entire April 2021 JITC Digest, please click here. 

Letter From the Editor- March

Dear JITC Readers,

Welcome to this month’s edition of the JITC digest. For many of our American and European readers, March marks the one-year anniversary of the first local shelter-in-place orders and travel restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Although everyday life is still far from the pre-pandemic normal in many places, it seems as though the news has been increasingly hopeful day-by-day, especially as the pace of vaccination continues to accelerate.

 

We in the immunotherapy community can share in some of the pride in the outstanding success of the RNA-based COVID vaccines—as JITC readers are well aware, the platform was originally developed for anti-tumor therapy. Additional intersections between cancer immunotherapy and SARS-CoV-2 will be explored in JITC’s new COVID-19 and Cancer Immunotherapy Review Series.

 

RNA vaccines are but one of many examples of innovations that originated in the immunotherapy field with far-reaching implications. Our discipline excels at developing new platforms, and there is no shortage of interesting technologies to be found in this month’s original research articles. As an example, be sure to read about the use of virtual clinical trials to optimize dosing schedules for combination oncolytic virus therapy in an intriguing computational biology paper by Adrienne L. Jenner and colleagues.

 

We have a wealth of biomarkers papers this month, all of which not only describe novel observations, but also rigorously provide mechanistic insight into tumor immunobiology. In one such report, Jiakai Hou et al elegantly leverage published data sets combined with a well-designed CRISPR/Cas9 drop-out screen to identify and categorize tumor-intrinsic resistance mechanisms to immune elimination.

 

Retrospective analyses also yield new insights in a paper by SIyuan Dai and colleagues, who identified in silico and validated in vitro a role for CD8+ T cell-secreted CXCL13 in immunoevasion by clear cell renal cell carcinoma.

 

A different chemokine’s receptor, CCR8 is revealed to be a specific marker of intratumoral regulatory T cells and a viable immunotherapeutic target that yields tumor control without autoimmunity in murine models in a manuscript by Helena Van Damme et al.

 

Finally, Karen Slattery and colleagues identify a novel, targetable and prognostic autocrine regulatory circuit involving TGF beta that leads to systemic natural killer cell dysfunction in patients with breast cancer.

 

Although many of us have been physically distanced from each other for much longer than we’d like, it is clear that our community of JITC readers, authors, editors, and reviewers is as strong and vibrant as ever, and I look toward the future with optimism.

 

Best regards,

Pedro J. Romero, MD
Editor-in-Chief, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

To view the entire March 2021 JITC Digest, please click here. 

President's Message -- February Fireside Chat with BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, MD

 Dear Colleagues,

One of my hopes over the next two years as your society President is to have sit-down conversations with some of the leading experts in cancer immunotherapy, and even potentially, the greater global scientific field. These “fireside chats” will seek to celebrate the work accomplished by the individual (and his/her team) in cancer research, and discuss the ornate hurdles that remain present to any number of challenges in their line of work.

This month, I am extremely pleased to welcome SITC member, Ugur Sahin, MD. CEO of BioNTech SE, Dr. Sahin and his company collaborated with Pfizer Inc., to produce and receive emergency use authorization for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in record time. I spoke to Dr. Sahin this month, in my first fireside chat, to discuss his background as an academic professor and researcher, the obstacles his company has had to overcome to develop an extremely effective vaccine and his expectations for the months ahead as a billion or more humans seek to receive protection from this virus.

I’m featuring a portion of the Q&A below for this month’s President’s Message, but please visit SITC’s COVID-19 Resources page on SITC CONNECT to watch the entire discussion.

Click here to watch the full interview

 

Question: How did you get this vaccine to U.S. FDA (emergency use authorization) in less than a year? Even the experts everywhere were saying it would take three to five years to get a vaccine initially, and here you did it in 11 months. How did you get that done?

Dr. Sahin: When we started our project, we expected this would really become a global pandemic. Our goal from the very beginning was to develop a vaccine and make it available in less than one year. We named our project Lightspeed, and the idea behind this designation was that we should not lose any time, so we did not have time to waste.

We implemented a 24/7 research program. When we started, we did not know what the best vaccine candidate was, so we started with 20 vaccine candidates. We did the full pre-clinical testing immunogenicity operation of these candidates. We even GMP toxicology study, because this was a pre-requisite from the Paul-Ehrlich Institute to evaluate that. We did the GMP manufacturing, and then we started the program just a few days later.

We submitted our documents on April 20 and three days later we had the approval to start the clinical trial in Germany. We did a partnership with Pfizer. Our plan was to have a serious approach to get all of the immunogenicity data from Phase 1. We understood that two vaccines provided really strong antibody and T-cell responses. We made the decision on July 24 for one of the candidates, and on July 27 the Phase 3 clinical trial started.

Question: What’s the future hold for RNA vaccines and infectious disease? Do you see that this technology is going to start to take over, and how many different epitopes can you put in there? Do you think you’re going to one day make a COVID-flu combination vaccine for example?

Dr. Sahin: The technology has extremely broad versatility, so you can combine. In our cancer trials, we are already combining four antigens, or six antigens. And this is of course possible in the same way for infectious disease vaccines. You can combine several antigens for one virus or combine antigens for different viruses.

Another key advantage of mRNA is to be able to make faster vaccines, so the manufacturing itself takes less than two weeks, then we have about two additional weeks for quality control and sterility testing, so that means you can in principle deliver a vaccine, from scratch, within four to six weeks. This is of course important advantages compared to the viral vector vaccines or the recombinant protein vaccines.

Question: How long do you think people will be immune for after having taken an RNA-based vaccine? Do you know from your cancer studies, can you predict with the COVID vaccine, is it going to be years?

Dr. Sahin: In principle we have to ask the question in different ways. The first lesson is what is needed to avoid infection at all? The prediction here is to avoid infection, you would need higher neutralizing antibodies, which are the key to avoiding infection. If you ask the question how long is protection for avoiding severe disease, this will be much longer. Avoiding severe disease can already be happening by having sufficient number of memory cells so that the immune response can kick on early, and even if you get infected, it’s not as severe disease because the immune system can catch up and control the virus infection in a few days. I think this is the way how vaccines work – if the immune response is quick, it can prevent severe disease; if the immune responses is very strong it can prevent infection.

Here at the moment in the pandemic situation, we are of course interested in both. First of all we would like to prevent infection, because if we prevent infection we will also prevent transmissions. But the second best thing we can do is prevent severe disease and thereby avoiding people dying from the infection. The latter could be accomplished, if the goal is the latter, then I believe such vaccines could have a memory effect for years. If we really want to avoid infection, then every year a booster might be useful.

 It was a very enjoyable and thought-provoking conversation, and I am very thankful for Dr. Sahin for his eagerness to share his experiences and lessons learned thus far from developing the coronavirus vaccine. I hope you enjoy listening to the entire discussion on the SITC website, and I look forward to other engaging fireside chats with cancer leaders in the future!

Sincerely,

 

Patrick Hwu, MD

SITC President

President's Message - January 2021

Dear Colleagues,

Happy New Year to all of you in the SITC family. This is my first message coming to you as SITC President and I find myself eager to begin as I assume a new role and our society continues to reach new heights. I would like to thank my friend and colleague Mario Sznol, MD, and all of the SITC Presidents before me, who helped SITC achieve such success to date, and I plan to continue such momentum in the coming two years.

As you know, we’ve all experienced many challenges in the past year. COVID-19 has upended all facets of our lives, but such conflict also pushed us to evolve and innovate in ways that allowed us to virtually congregate and collaborate to keep our society, and the greater cancer immunotherapy field moving forward.

One of the truly amazing things of this past year is, the solution to overcoming the pandemic through a safe and effective vaccine has been made possible as the result of advances in immunology. As the initial doses of the first approved vaccine were delivered to members of the general public in December, and as I recently received the vaccine as well, my heart swelled with pride knowing it was a cancer research company specializing in immunotherapies (BioNTech) that played such a crucial role in the development of this life-saving technology. Our field stands on the shoulders of countless giants in tumor immunology that have made today’s current state of care possible, and I know the future is bright as we continue our work to save and prolong the lives of all of our patients.

The coronavirus pandemic has reminded us all that regardless of how close-knit our local professional networks can be, we ultimately are all part of a larger, globally diverse field of cancer researchers and clinicians. This is part of the reason why SITC prioritized issuing a statement of support on FDA-authorized SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in December. As the statement notes, our society encourages all cancer patients receiving approved or investigational immunotherapy as part of their treatment regimen, either as standard of care or as part of a clinical trial and without a general contraindication to vaccination, to receive the vaccine when made available to them. The statement, published on Dec. 23, 2020, was done so by SITC leaders based on the known data at the time, and we will continue to monitor the field for any new information that could affect or further inform the society’s stance.

In 2020, our membership increased to more than 4,600 cancer immunotherapy professionals representing over 60 countries around the world. One of the key goals in our society’s strategic plan is to advance the science and application of cancer immunotherapy worldwide. As the SITC footprint grows with each passing year, it is incumbent upon our society to use this increased influence to broker new collaborations among scientific and governmental agencies all in an effort to improve patient access to new and promising therapies.

In December, SITC hosted the virtual workshop, Global Access to Cancer Immunotherapy: Closing the Gaps. Organized through the guidance and strategic vision of the SITC Global Access and Impact Committee, which is chaired by David Kaufman, MD, PhD, this workshop connected more than 60 stakeholders from around the world to discuss and define minimal infrastructure requirements for safe and effective IO administration around the world. Congruent with SITC’s mission to ensure that all immunotherapy advancements are accessible to the general public, enduring materials from this workshop are now available for your review.

Thank you to the countless individuals who helped make the past year a success for SITC, despite such difficult circumstances. I greatly look forward to working with so many SITC leaders and volunteers in the coming months as we continue our mission of improving cancer patient outcomes through immunotherapy. 

Sincerely,

 

Patrick Hwu, MD

SITC President

Letter From the Editor- January

Dear JITC Readers,

Happy new year and welcome to the first JITC digest of 2021. Even against the backdrop of the global COVID-19 pandemic, last year was a banner year for immuno-oncology, with immunotherapy becoming the standard of care in more and more disease settings. I look ahead to 2021 with optimism that the immunotherapy field will continue apace—providing lifesaving options for patients with cancer and advancing our understanding of the basic immunological mechanisms of tumor control.

 

During the month of December, four new papers from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) were published in JITC, including the clinical practice guideline on immune effector cell-related adverse events, which will be of great value to the hematology and oncology communities. The journal is proud to support the society’s goal of scientific exchange by publishing these excellent peer-reviewed papers among the top-tier research that appears in JITC.

 

The original research articles highlighted in this month’s digest all provide new insight into one of the most challenging questions in our field: Why does checkpoint inhibition induce deep and durable responses in some, but not all, tumors?

 

Joshua R Veatch and colleagues develop an elegant enrichment and deep-sequencing strategy to show that neoantigen-responsive T cells were associated with tumor control in one patient with melanoma—shining light on a relatively minor contribution of self-antigen reactive T cells.

 

Expanding our understanding of potential immune checkpoints beyond PD-1 in virus-associated solid tumors, Isobel Okoye et al identify upregulation of the TIM-3 ligand galectin-9 as a marker of functional exhaustion and impaired T cell and natural killer NK cell responses.

 

The exhaustion phenotypes of T cells from primary and metastatic sites in ovarian cancers are clearly delineated by Galam Leem and colleagues, identifying 4-1BB costimulation as a potential means to reinvigorate defective immune responses in this setting.

 

Finally, in a provocative rebuke of the so-called “obesity paradox,” Shannon K Boi et al show that high body mass index is associated with worse outcomes with PD-1 inhibition for renal cell carcinoma in the real-world setting, and use mouse models to provide mechanistic insight into a role for IL-1 beta in diminished responses to therapy.

 

With best wishes for the coming year,

Pedro J. Romero, MD
Editor-in-Chief, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

To view the entire January 2021 JITC Digest, please click here. 

JITC Letter From the Editor - September

Dear JITC Readers,

It is a pleasure to welcome you to this edition of the JITC digest. A new academic year is getting underway for many of our readers, and regardless of the “new normal” imposed by COVID-19, the journal continues to publish groundbreaking research from across the immunotherapy field.

 

The articles spotlighted in this month’s digest exemplify how the immunotherapy field excels at bringing a new perspective to processes or therapies that might be considered familiar—thus advancing our discipline in novel and important new directions.

 

John C. Flickinger Jr., and colleagues creatively overcome the obstacle inherent in many cancer vaccine approaches of pre-existing host immunity to the adenoviral backbone by engineering a new chimeric vector.

 

By taking a new look at a familiar cytokine, Tal Kan et al provide evidence that IL-31 may induce anti-tumor immunity in breast cancer.

 

New immune response biomarkers that could help identify patients with melanoma who may benefit from combination radiotherapy and CTLA-4 blockade are described by Celine Boutros and colleagues. Additionally, evidence for safety and efficacy with retreatment with anti-PD-L1 therapy after discontinuation for reasons other than toxicity or progression is provided by Siddharth Sheth et al.

 

Although the results were negative for a first-in-human trial for a first-in-class, orally administered, selective dual inhibitor of IDO1 and TDO2, reported by Aung Naing and colleagues, the findings could set the stage for future studies of rational combinations of therapies targeting tryptophan metabolism and other immunotherapy agents.

 

Finally, a first-of-its-kind study by Pedro Barata et al demonstrates the feasibility of using a commercially available cell-free DNA assay to identify patients with advanced prostate cancer and microsatellite instability-high tumors who may benefit from pembrolizumab.

 

To further your reading this month, be sure to browse JITC’s Reading List, with an intriguing selection of papers drawn from the viral immunology world, selected by Dr. Howard Kaufman.

Best regards,

Pedro J. Romero, MD
Editor-in-Chief, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

To view the entire September 2020 JITC Digest, please click here. 

President's Message - June 2020

Dear Colleagues,

While the global coronavirus pandemic has held our attention since March, this edition of the President’s Message will focus on the greater mission that brings us all together.

June is Cancer Immunotherapy Awareness Month™, and so, first and most important, I would like to thank our members for the countless ways you contribute to advancing and delivery of cancer immunotherapy. Originally founded in 1984 as the Society for Biological Therapy by 40 charter members, SITC has proudly grown to more than 3,000 members representing 48 countries around the globe. Such growth could not have been possible if it were not for the sound, strategic leadership of my predecessors, who maintained their strong belief in this field despite substantial skepticism in other parts of the scientific community and the limited success of earlier therapies. Therefore, with the opportunity presented by Cancer Immunotherapy Month™, I would like to acknowledge all of SITC’s Past Presidents for their guidance, expertise and their continued contributions to our society.

This month, SITC will call attention to the many ways our society, through the contributions and dedication of its members, are positively affecting the field of cancer immunotherapy. On our website and social media channels, including Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, SITC will feature a different program, resource or SITC initiative each day of the month. Further, we will celebrate and honor the scientists, clinicians and many others in the field by wearing white on Friday, June 12. You can download SITC’s 2020 “Why I Wear White” flyer, take a selfie with a decorated flyer, and post it to social media. And don’t forget to tag SITC!

SITC staff and meeting organizers continue preparing for our society’s upcoming 35^th Anniversary Annual Meeting (Nov. 10–15 in National Harbor, Md.). We look forward to seeing all of you there and I encourage you to register for what will be another outstanding meeting. We are monitoring world events closely and continue to place the safety of our members as our top priority. Please also note that enduring materials from the 34^th Annual Meeting & Pre-Conference Programs (SITC 2019) are now available by open access to the general public. To access these and numerous other quality resources published from past SITC meetings, please visit the SITC Resource Library.

Finally, I want to bring to your attention again the remarkable progress and success of the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC), our society’s official open access journal. JITC received its first impact factor just two years ago, ranking it as one of the top cancer immunotherapy journals, and is currently receiving a record number of submissions. JITC will now also offer continuing medical education (CME) credits for its reviewers. Continue reading this month’s edition of the Immune Monitor to learn more about this valuable new feature from JITC.

I wish you all a happy and safe beginning to summer.

Sincerely,

Mario Sznol, MD

SITC President

President's Message - May 2020

Dear Colleagues,

The global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is evolving rapidly and many questions remain unanswered. The pandemic has added a great level of uncertainty to our lives and understandably for the Society’s plans and activities for at least the next several months. Nevertheless, we are actively adapting to new realities, so we can continue our basic mission to improve outcomes for cancer patients by advancing the science, development and application of cancer immunology and immunotherapy.

From witnessing events at my own institution and speaking to colleagues around the world, the pandemic has disrupted or completely halted lab work for many and is significantly affecting the day-to-day management of patient care in many of our institutions. On behalf of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), I would like to thank the countless health care workers and researchers working around the clock to overcome this pandemic.

SITC members in the nearly 50 countries where our membership extends are playing important and active roles in the response to COVID-19, lending their expertise in clinical care, clinical trial methodology and immunology.  SITC as an organization is using its comprehensive professional network and infrastructure to facilitate information exchange, particularly as it relates to the impact of COVID-19 on delivery of cancer immunotherapy and the use of immune modulators to treat COVID-19 patients. The importance of cancer research has not diminished, and we continue to advocate for our field.

In March, SITC launched a pair of open-to-the-public online communities focused solely on the coronavirus. Members and nonmembers can participate in online discussions of patient management and care as it relates to COVID-19 and considerations for basic and translational research. Access to the forums is available through With a free SITC CONNECT login. Please consider sharing your expertise and lessons learned involving COVID-19 within these forums.

Based on preliminary observations from non-randomized clinical data, SITC recently published a statement calling for expanded access to anti-IL-6/IL-6R therapies for the treatment of COVID-19 patients in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC). The statement was co-authored by several of our colleagues, and encourages the pharmaceutical industry, health authorities and institutional IRBs to work creatively and collaboratively to expand access to anti-IL-6 therapies for critically ill patients with COVID-19, while waiting for results from controlled randomized trials. SITC also produced an additional publication titled, “The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Perspective on Regulation of Interleukin 6 Signaling in COVID-19-related Systemic Inflammatory Response.” The analysis reviews additional investigational therapies that could be explored as approaches to reduce the severe and damaging inflammatory response observed during COVID-19 infection.

One of the key outstanding questions for many of our clinicians is the impact of PD-1/PD-L1 blocking antibodies on the course of COVID-19 infection. At this time, there are no clear data which indicate changes to the risk-benefit ratio of immune checkpoint inhibitors during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are both theoretical increased risks (for example, hyperinflammation during infection) and potential benefits (improved clearance of the virus and lower morbidity/mortality). A summary of considerations was shared with SITC by colleagues at Genentech-Roche and has been posted here for your review.

To access all of the COVID-19-related resources from our society, and those from other reputable sources, please visit SITC’s COVID-19 resources webpage to track the latest news, participate in online discussions and more.

SITC leadership remain as committed as ever to achieving our society’s strategic goals. This is why I ask that if you have ever considered joining the SITC family (or if you have not yet renewed your membership for 2020), please do so now. COVID-19 is affecting our organization in many ways, and I know SITC and its members will come out of this stronger than ever.  We greatly appreciate your commitment to our society and the support your membership provides to SITC in these difficult times.

As part of the benefits of a membership, SITC recently made available to its members free access to enduring materials from the Cancer Immunotherapy Winter School, hosted this past January in Houston. The program, in its second year, provided attendees with a deep understanding of the core principles of tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy and examined developing areas in the field. SITC also provides free access to dozens of online courses for patients, clinicians and researchers. Please visit SITC Cancer Immunotherapy connectED, our society’s online education portal, to engage with the society and continue learning from the comforts of your home.

Finally, SITC will soon commence its 2020 election to choose the future leaders of our society. Beginning May 6–20, SITC regular and emeritus members current in their dues will cast their votes for our next Vice President, Secretary/Treasurer and three At-Large Directors. I would like to thank this year’s candidates and those completing their terms later this year (including Secretary/Treasurer Kim A. Margolin, MD; as well as At-Large Directors Paolo Antonio Ascierto, MD; David Kaufman, MD, PhD; and Douglas G. McNeel, MD, PhD). SITC’s future is bright and in good hands with my colleague and friend, Patrick Hwu, MD, set to assume role of SITC President in January. Continue reading this month’s Immune Monitor for a complete listing of the 2020 SITC Election candidates.

Thank you all for the many ways you are positively affecting patient outcomes during these uncertain times. I wish you the best of health and happiness and look forward to seeing you at a future SITC program.

Sincerely,

Mario Sznol, MD
SITC President

JITC Letter from the Editor - April 2020

Dear JITC Readers,

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge almost all aspects of daily life, JITC remains unwavering in our commitment to publishing the very best that the immunotherapy field has to offer. Although SARS-CoV-2 is radically changing how we as a community care for our patients and conduct our research, you can count on JITC as a constant source for new findings and important insights from across the spectrum of immuno-oncology. 

This month, the JITC digest offers several papers that develop intriguing strategies to boost antitumor immune responses. Jahangir Ahmed and colleagues engineered a replication-competent oncolytic vaccinia virus that delivers IL-12 to the tumor microenvironment, prolonging survival and controlling lung metastases when administered as an adjuvant to surgical excision in mouse models. Modulation of the tumor microenvironment also synergized with checkpoint blockade in a paper by Lucas A. Horn et al., where combined inhibition of TGF-beta and IL-8 signaling attenuated epithelial to mesenchymal transition in models of both breast and lung cancer. Additionally, Yong Li and colleagues revealed a key role in signaling through the innate immune danger-recognition sensor RIG-I in the development of interferon resistance in melanoma tumor-regenerating cells, identifying STAT3 as a potential therapeutic target. 

Also this month, in a paper that will surely prove reassuring, Nicholas Bevins and colleagues rigorously analyzed the impact of different methods of calculating tumor mutational burden and found good correlation between approaches. 

Finally, be sure not to miss an outstanding review by Lorenzo Galluzzi et al. that delivers a thorough overview of immunologic cell death with detailed discussions of the biological mechanisms leading to the establishment of immunologic memory, the available assays to measure key phenomena, and the hurdles to overcome for translation into clinical benefit. 

Best regards,

Pedro J. Romero, MD
Editor-in-Chief, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

To view the entire April 2020 JITC Digest, please click here. 

President's Message - March-April 2020

Dear Colleagues,

The letter below was written before the COVID-19 pandemic transformed our lives. First, I hope all of you and your families are safe. For our members involved in delivery of health care, we are grateful for your courage, sacrifice and dedication to your patients. Many in our society are likely turning their attention to research focused on the COVID pandemic and to care of COVID patients. I am aware that many of you are cooperating with your infectious disease, critical care and pulmonary colleagues to secure the resources required to take care of as many infected patients as possible.

At the urging of two of our past Presidents (Jon Wigginton, MD, and Bernard Fox, PhD), the society has already taken steps to enable our members to exchange information on the pandemic, particularly how it impacts cancer care and patients receiving anti-cancer immunotherapy (see below). SITC members have substantial expertise in immunology and clinical trial methodology, and this experience in cancer could help our colleagues to reduce the overall impact of the pandemic. For example, translational studies to define the immunologic responses to the virus and identify abnormal/ineffective responses that fail to clear virus and/or produce immune-mediated pathology could lead to novel therapeutics. Our members are very familiar with the urgent need to find therapies for life-threatening diseases and can advocate to make potentially life-saving medications available to patients. At the same time, we can also advocate for developing therapies based on sound scientific evidence produced in high quality clinical research; in our own field, we are keenly aware of potentially misleading conclusions from anecdotal reports, uncontrolled trials and small randomized studies of therapeutic agents. We live in a time of amazing science, and I feel confident that science will rapidly produce effective diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for this pandemic and the next pandemic we will face in the future.

So, on a note of optimism, we are proceeding with plans for a live Annual Meeting this year. In November, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) will welcome thousands of our most dedicated and accomplished basic scientists, translational researchers, clinicians and others to our 35^th Anniversary Annual Meeting & Pre-Conference Programs (SITC 2020). SITC member registration is officially open. In keeping with our commitment to promote early career development and in celebration of the society's 35^th anniversary, all current student members of SITC will receive free registration to the 35^th Anniversary Annual Meeting.

Please take note that SITC 2020 will take place on new days this year (Tuesday, Nov. 10–Sunday, Nov. 15), and we will return to the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md.

As in past years, the 2020 Annual Meeting will feature several keynote presentations delivered by investigators whose work opened new areas of investigation and transformed our field. Elizabeth M. Jaffee, MD (Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins), will deliver her keynote address titled, Turning Immunologically Quiescent Tumors into Immune Responsive Cancers. And commemorating our society's 35^th anniversary, Helen E. Heslop, MD (Baylor College of Medicine), will describe the current state of T-cell Therapy of Cancer in her keynote address.

We are also very much looking forward to the Richard V. Smalley, MD, Memorial Award and Lectureship, our society's highest award and named in honor of the SITC charter member. This fall, we honor three researchers whose contributions to the area of immune checkpoint inhibitors fundamentally changed the treatment of cancer: Lieping Chen, MD, PhD (Yale School of Medicine), Gordon Freeman, MD, PhD (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute), and Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD (Harvard Medical School). I would like to thank this year's keynote speakers for sharing their expertise with SITC 2020 attendees and for their continued contributions in the field.

SITC 2020 will again include workshops and programs for an intense focus on specific scientific topics and for broader educational objectives. Our annual workshop, a pre-conference program, will delve more deeply into the rapidly expanding area of Engineering Immune Cells for Cancer Therapy. This year's industry program will address Immunotherapy Resistance and Failure for immune checkpoint inhibitors. Applications for consideration to present your research during the Immunotherapy Resistance and Failure Pre-Conference Program are also open, and are due on July 31, 2020, at 5 p.m. PDT. The Primer on Tumor Immunology and Cancer Immunotherapy™ is a critical and timely educational program covering the basic principles and a variety of techniques within tumor immunology and immunotherapy. New for this year, the Primer will also touch on emerging therapies and technologies in the field.

In our society's continued effort to provide early career investigators with meaningful professional development and networking opportunities, SITC will again host a workshop on building skills to write successful grants; a Meet-the-Expert Lunch for attendees to connect with leaders in the field in a small group setting; and an evening early career scientist networking event. SITC's Career Connections program will return for a second year and will include a networking reception, on-site job board and other opportunities for attendees to connect directly (and don't forget to peruse our Online Job Board, available year-round). Further, SITC, through support from the Forward Fund, will present 35 travel awards to young investigators this year, recognizing their research achievements. The early career scientists will be honored during the Award Ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 14. I will do my best to pronounce all the names correctly this year.

Please be sure to attend the 35^th Anniversary Reception in celebration of the society's special anniversary year, which will take place the evening of Saturday, Nov. 14, at the National Museum of American History. This will be an amazing night of Washington D.C. fun and frolic and you will be able to celebrate 35 years of immense dedication to discovery and application of cancer immunotherapy with your colleagues in an impressive museum, and the night will include heavy hors d'oeuvres, drinks and dancing. Purchase your tickets through your SITC 2020 registration.

As outstanding research is a perennial highlight at our Annual Meeting, we hope you'll submit your work for consideration as an oral or poster abstract presentation. Submissions are now open for regular abstract and late-breaking abstract applications.

In celebration of our 35^th anniversary, SITC will offer 35 Young Investigator Awards, all recognizing excellence in novel research and providing young investigators with the experience necessary for successful careers. SITC is also accepting research applications on immune checkpoint inhibitor resistance or failure for the opportunity to present during SITC 2020's Immunotherapy Resistance and Failure Pre-Conference Program.

We've covered only a small portion of the agenda that will make SITC 2020 another remarkable Annual Meeting. I will continue to provide updates about programing as the year progresses. Meanwhile, for those who have not yet signed up for a SITC membership in 2020, please do so now to receive access to the exclusive SITC 2020 members-only registration period and access to housing. Public registration opens on April 20. Click here to learn more about SITC 2020 registration or continue reading this month's edition of the Immune Monitor.

I look forward to seeing in National Harbor this Nov. 10–15 for SITC 2020.

 

Sincerely,

Mario Sznol, MD
SITC President

JITC Letter from the Editor - March 2020

Dear JITC Readers,

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global emergency of unprecedented scale, placing an incredible burden on the healthcare system in every affected nation. As JITC readers, you are at the forefront of the outbreak, and, on behalf of the journal as well as SITC as a whole, we wholeheartedly offer gratitude for your ongoing efforts while wishing health and safety for you, your families and your patients.

Publication at JITC continues with this March edition of the JITC digest, which spotlights our commitment to publishing high quality scholarly work in a variety of formats. The journal is quickly becoming not only a leading repository of original research papers in the immunotherapy field, but also a go-to source for top-tier reviews and cutting-edge short hypotheses and case reports.   

Original research articles in this month's JITC digest are similar inasmuch as they describe processes for building tools, but they originate from opposite ends of the translational research spectrum. In a fully computational work that performed all experiments in silico with publically available datasets, Jie Sun and colleagues identify a long non-coding RNA signature as an indicator of immune cell infiltration in non-small cell lung cancer that was predictive of patient outcomes and response to checkpoint blockade. The other paper, from Ssu-Hsueh Tseng et al., describes extensive and elegant "wet" lab work to develop and validate a novel genetically induced mouse model of peritoneal metastasis in high-grade serous carcinoma.

Publishing excellent reviews is a priority for the journal, and we're proud this month to feature a comprehensive discussion of adenosinergic signaling in tumor immunosuppression with a focus on the potential of CD39 as a potential target for checkpoint therapy by David Allard, Bertrand Allard and John Stagg. This is part of JITC's growing Immune Checkpoints Beyond PD-1 review series.  

Finally, Esther Lutgens and Tom Seijkens present a hypothesis that checkpoint inhibition could promote the inflammatory processes in the vascular wall that drive atherosclerosis progression—a concept that merits further study.

As JITC continues to grow and thrive, the efforts and insights of the journal's peer reviewers are always appreciated. It's this "behind the scenes" work that ensures JITC remains the leading journal in the immunotherapy field. If you would like to support the journal while also gaining the many benefits of being a peer reviewer, we are welcoming applications, which you may submit through the SITC Volunteer Portal.

Best regards,

Pedro J. Romero, MD
Editor-in-Chief, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

To view the entire March 2020 JITC Digest, please click here.