LETTER FROM THE EDITOR - DECEMBER

Hello JITC Readers,

Welcome to the last JITC Digest of 2022. It has been a busy and momentous year for the journal—we celebrated our 10^th anniversary, we launched our peer review mentorship program, we surpassed 40,000 total citations, and we accepted more than 500 high-quality articles for publication.

Among the excellent articles that we published this year, our review series, “Imaging and Immunotherapy,” featured eight fantastic papers from leading voices from a multitude of backgrounds, including oncologists, imaging scientists, and radiologists. Explore this month’s special feature to catch up on the reviews on topics including novel imaging strategies, new approaches to conventional imaging such as artificial intelligence and radiomics, as well as special considerations for radiotherapy, immunotherapy, and imaging.

This month’s original research highlights include two innovative approaches to cell therapy, a role for RNA editing in limiting antitumor immunity with DNA methyltransferase inhibition, and the first quantitative systems pharmacology model for hepatocellular carcinoma.  

Alvaro Haroun-Izquierdo and colleagues lay the groundwork for off-the-shelf cell therapies by developing a GMP-compliant protocol to reproducibly and robustly expand adaptive natural killer cells. Mechanisms of resistance to anti-BCMA CAR T cells in multiple myeloma are characterized by Nicolas Camviel et al.

Stephanie Gomez and colleagues provide rationale for combination inhibition of adenosine deaminase 1 and DNA methyltransferases to enhance lymphocyte infiltration and interferon sensitivity in ovarian cancer. 

Finally, Richard J Sové et al conduct a virtual clinical trial in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma and identify candidate biomarkers predicting response to combination PD-1 and CTLA-4 blockade. 

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and looking forward to the year ahead. 

Best,

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

 

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR - NOVEMBER

Dear JITC Readers,

Welcome to the latest edition of the JITC Digest, arriving in your inboxes just a few days after SITC’s 2022 Annual Meeting and Pre-Conference Programs. It was wonderful to see everybody in person and interact with so many of you, the JITC readers, during our meet the editor sessions, the journal’s 10^th anniversary reception, and out around Boston.

If you were not able to attend the concurrent session on Friday dedicated to JITC’s high-impact science, I encourage you catch up on the outstanding best paper award winners highlighted in this month’s special feature. Please also join me in extending heartfelt congratulations to the 2022 recipient of the Pedro J. Romero Service to JITC Award, Cornelis J.M. "Kees" Melief.

During her keynote address at SITC 2022, Padmanee Sharma described a model of iteration from clinical results to basic laboratory research that is then translated back to the clinic. JITC is proud to have supported this vital process over the past decade by publishing innovative science from across the basic science-translational-clinical spectrum, and we’re excited to help move our field forward for many more years in the future.

Our highlighted papers this month also span the basic science-translational-clinical spectrum, and include three original research articles and a case report.

Uncovering an underappreciated mechanism of immune dysfunction in the tumor microenvironment, Xia Liu and colleagues demonstrate that inhibition of DNA damage response signaling enhances the efficacy of PD-1 blockade by alleviating T cell senescence.

Enhanced T cell infiltration in both irradiated and non-irradiated lesions provides evidence for an abscopal effect with stereotactic body radiotherapy combined with pembrolizumab in a report from the phase II PEMBRO-RT trial from Lieke L van der Woude et al.

Xiaolu Yu and colleagues describe a novel PD-L1-directed nanobody conjugated to a Toll-like receptor 7 agonist that induced complete regressions in murine models of early, established, and immunologically cold tumors.

Finally, Niklas Kehl and colleagues describe the first comprehensive genomic and immune profiling of IgE multiple myeloma, finding an unprecedentedly high mutation burden in this orphan disease and identifying neoepitopes that elicit autoreactive T cell responses.

I hope everyone’s travels returning home from Boston were smooth!

Best regards,

 

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

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR - OCTOBER

Hello JITC Readers,

Welcome to the latest edition of the JITC digest. October is an exciting and busy time here at the journal as preparations are underway for the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting & Pre-Conference Programs, held this year at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, November 8–12.

If you’ll be in Boston, be sure to stop by the society booth at 12:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, November 10, to say hello during our meet the editors session. On Friday, November 11 at 12:10 p.m., you can catch rapid oral presentations from this year’s JITC Best Paper Award Winners along with an update from our editorial leadership during session 207, "A Look at JITC's High-Impact Science." Finally, we hope you will join us for a special JITC 10^th Anniversary Reception on Friday night at 7 p.m., held during the poster reception.

If you can’t make it to Boston, you can always follow along from afar on JITC’s social media channels. In addition to our Twitter feed, JITC now has a LinkedIn profile and we encourage you to connect with us!

This month’s JITC digest features three excellent original research articles and an intriguing short report.

In a timely article given the ongoing viral vector backlog that is causing months-long delays in treatment for some patients with hematological malignancies, Katherine P Mueller et al describe CRISPR-Cas9-based manufacturing of chimeric antigen receptor T cells enriched for memory phenotypes.

Two papers provide novel insights into mechanisms of immune exclusion. Anqi Li and colleagues demonstrate that therapeutic targeting of the cell surface docking receptor that activates all major isoforms of latent transforming growth factor beta improves responses to anti-PD-1 in multiple relevant preclinical models. Carsten Krieg et al identify a role for the complement anaphylatoxin C3a receptor in resistance to anti-PD-1 and the establishment of the immunologically cold colorectal cancer tumor microenvironment.

Finally, Kok Haw Jonathan Lim et al put forward a short report with evidence that the extracellular plasma protein secreted gelsolin is a negative regulator of immunogenic cell death in response to chemotherapy, radiation, and targeted therapy.

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see some of you in Boston.

Best, 

 

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