JITC Letter From the Editor - July 2020

Dear JITC Readers,

I am thrilled to share exciting news with you in this latest edition of the JITC digest. This year, JITC increased its impact factor to 9.913, making the journal the highest ranked fully open access immunology journal and in the top 8 percent of all journals in the oncology and immunology categories. The ranking not only reflects the increasing prominence of the cancer immunotherapy field as a whole, but also the outstanding efforts of our JITC editors and expert reviewers, who work tirelessly to ensure that the journal publishes only the top-tier submissions month after month. With a sharp increase in manuscripts submitted to JITC during the last two years, we remain committed to a high standard of timely peer review and to facilitating the publishing of high quality content for our readership.

This month is no exception, with a total of 63 articles publishing in JITC during June. As always, the research spans a wide diversity of topics representing almost every step in the path from bench to bedside. The papers highlighted in this month’s digest include basic research, translational science and human trials.

On the basic science side, Lorena Carmona Rodríguez and colleagues uncover a novel, cell context-specific role for WNT signaling in controlling access to tumors by infiltrating lymphocytes. In another study investigating changes to the tumor microenvironment, Simon P Keam et al demonstrate through NanoString immune gene expression profiling, digital spatial profiling, and high-throughput immune cell multiplex immunohistochemistry analysis on samples from human patients, that high dose-rate brachytherapy converts immunologically cold tumors to hot.

On the therapeutics side, Matteo Libero Baroni et al provide evidence that CD123-directed chimeric antigen receptor T cells are profoundly myeloablative, opening the door to a potential bridge to transplant therapy for acute myeloid leukemia. Victoria A Brentvile and colleagues develop a novel tumor vaccine based on a mixture of three citrullinated peptides that takes advantage of a toll-like receptor agonist adjuvant to dramatically reduce the effective therapeutic dose. Additionally, Adi Reches and colleagues identify a potentially promising new target for checkpoint inhibition in Nectin4, which is a TIGIT ligand with highly restricted expression to tumor cells.

Finally, David S Hong and colleagues demonstrate significant increases in tumor-infiltrating CD3+ and CD8+ T cells in patients with advanced solid tumors after treatment with a small-molecule antagonist of the E-type prostanoid receptor 4 in a first-in-human clinical trial.

I hope you enjoy these articles, and all of the excellent papers published this month in JITC. Also, be sure to peruse this month’s JITC's Reading List for a selection of papers of interest from other journals.

Best regards,

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

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

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