JITC Letter from the Editor - February 2020

Dear JITC Readers,

Welcome to the February edition of the JITC digest. The journal continues to grow and thrive, publishing impactful research across the entire spectrum of the diverse and interdisciplinary immunotherapy field. The articles in this month's digest highlight innovative approaches to overcoming longstanding challenges in cancer immunotherapy, and will surely spark important conversations moving forward.

I'm thrilled to report that this month's digest features three papers from one of the journal's new sections, Immune cell therapies and immune cell engineering—a burgeoning area that continues to push boundaries in terms of advancing scientific understanding and improving patient outcomes.

The highlighted articles feature somewhat "outside-the-box" cell therapy strategies, two of which could have exciting implications for the treatment of solid tumors. In elegant preclinical models, Rahul Suresh et al. demonstrate robust anti-tumor activity by adoptively transferred gene-edited immature myeloid cells. In a different tactic, the feasibility of generating PD-1-deficient effector memory T cells specific for melanoma antigens was demonstrated by Lucine Marotte and colleagues.

Although cell therapies have a well-established role in the treatment of hematologic malignancies, relapse remains common. In an attempt to improve outcomes, Benjamin Derman et al. demonstrate two effective strategies to significantly reduce and delay T regulatory cell recovery after autologous stem cell transplant in a pilot study of 15 patients with multiple myeloma.

In addition to the exciting articles in the cell therapy section, be sure to read the paper by Shibin Qu et al., describing a novel approach to tumor ablation that causes the release of non-denatured neoantigens and damage-associated molecular patterns capable of potentiating the efficacy of checkpoint blockade for non-immunogenic tumors in mouse models.

Our field keeps moving at a tremendous pace! If you'd like to join in to real-time conversations about the latest research and you're active on social media, be sure to take a moment to follow the official JITC Twitter handle, @jitcancer.  

Best regards,

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

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