Letter From the Editor - May

Dear JITC Readers,

Welcome to the latest edition of the JITC Digest. Astute readers have likely noticed that this month’s digest is debuting a new feature. In addition to the usual programming—exciting new publications in JITC—the digest will now also highlight popular papers from the journal archive.

 

This month, we have four original research articles that offer novel insight on one of our field’s most challenging obstacles: resistance to therapy. Addressing immunotherapy resistance is a priority for the field as a whole, and the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer is spearheading efforts toward developing uniform clinical definitions of resistance as well as support the basic and translational research in order to understand and overcome the mechanistic underpinnings.

 

Barbara Manzanares-Martin and colleagues reveal a surprising association between genomic heterozygosity for the killer-cell immunoglobin-like receptor and overcoming KRAS mutation-mediated resistance to cetuximab.

 

Disease that develops resistance to anti-PD-1 therapies is often highly challenging to treat, but results from two early phase trials in this month’s digest may offer patients new options. Brendan D Curti et al show safety and promising efficacy with the combination of a novel galectin antagonist and pembrolizumab for melanoma and head and neck cancer. Intratumoral injection of the oncolytic poliovirus PVSRIPO led to complete regressions even in uninjected lesions in some patients with melanoma in a phase I trial reported by Georgia M Beasley et al.

 

Finally, Michael W Knitz and colleagues provide deep mechanistic characterization of the interplay between dendritic cells and regulatory T cells that causes head and neck cancers to remain stubbornly immunologically cold after radioimmunotherapy.

 

Be sure to browse this month’s highlight of classic papers as well as the new original research—perhaps perspective from the archives may help spark novel insight into a new finding or vice versa.

 

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. 

JITC Letter from the Editor - December 2019

Dear JITC Readers,

This is the final JITC digest of 2019, and we are ending the year on a historic note with December’s issue containing the most-ever papers published in a single month since the journal’s inception! It has been an exciting year for JITC, and we look forward to what the future holds as the immunotherapy field continues to expand and evolve.

The highlighted papers in this month’s JITC digest truly exemplify some of the most exciting areas of research in our field, spanning preclinical models to human trials and adding new insight into the contribution of the tumor microenvironment to disease progression and immunotherapy resistance as well as the development of novel immunotherapeutic agents.

Be sure to read the Editor Picks below about microenvironment-targeting therapeutics for the reprogramming of myeloid-derived suppressor cells and for the selective depletion of tumor-associated macrophages, gene-edited “off-the-shelf” CAR T cells for the treatment of glioblastoma, preclinical validation for a new checkpoint inhibitor target in ovarian cancer, newly described mechanisms of immunotherapy resistance in melanoma, a deeper understanding of the two types of secondary bone metastases in prostate cancer, and a phase 2 trial describing dendritic cell vaccines for prostate cancer that that induce clinically meaningful immune responses.

With best regards,

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

To view the entire December 2019 JITC Digest, please click here. 

JITC Letter from the Editor - November 2019

Dear JITC Readers,

You are receiving this email in the weeks after SITC’s 2019 Annual Meeting and Pre-Conference Programs. This year’s meeting was a smashing success, truly highlighting the broad spectrum of basic science and clinical and translational research in immunotherapy. It is an exciting time for the field, and we are looking forward to possibly seeing some of the data presented at the meeting in upcoming issues of JITC.

Additionally, I am delighted to announce that Dr. Jason Luke, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hillman Cancer Center, has accepted the role of JITC’s social media editor! Dr. Luke will be managing the journal’s recently launched twitter handle. Be sure to take a moment to follow @JITCancer.

This month’s JITC digest exemplifies the interdisciplinary nature of immunotherapy research, with everything from basic insight into T cell metabolism and immunology to clinical trial results and next-generation sequencing.

“TLR9 acts as a sensor for tumor-released DNA to modulate anti-tumor immunity after chemotherapy” by Tae Hung and colleagues reveals new insight into how platinum-based chemotherapy can act as an immune adjuvant through innate immune danger-sensing pathways.

A review by Bridget P. Keenan et al., “Immunotherapy in hepatocellular carcinoma: the complex interface between inflammation, fibrosis, and the immune response,” describes the delicate balance between protective immunity in the liver and pathological inflammation that may lead to cirrhosis, fibrosis and cancer.

Beatris Mastelic-Gavillet et al. elucidate how adenosine within the tumor microenvironment contributes to disease progression by metabolic suppression of effector T cells. The paper, “Adenosine mediates functional and metabolic suppression of peripheral and tumor-infiltrating CD8+ T cells,” outlines potential biomarkers to monitor future immunotherapies targeting adenosine signaling.

In “Systemic and local immunity following adoptive transfer of NY-ESO-1 SPEAR T cells in synovial sarcoma,” Indu Ramachandran et al. provide the first evidence for affinity-enhanced receptor engineered SPEAR T cells infiltrating solid tumors—a promising result for the treatment of synovial sarcoma and other malignancies that fail to respond to immune checkpoint blockade.

Finally, Zijun Y. Xu-Monette and colleagues undertake impressive and comprehensive ultra-deep sequencing to identify differential links between somatic hypermutation in immunoglobulin heavy and light chains and clinical outcomes in diffuse large B cell lymphomas in, “Immunoglobulin somatic hypermutation has clinical impact in DLBCL and potential implications for immune checkpoint blockade and neoantigen-based immunotherapies.”

I hope you enjoy this issue!

With best regards,

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

To view the entire November 2019 JITC Digest, please click here.