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