LETTER FROM THE EDITOR - AUGUST

Dear JITC Readers,

Welcome to the August edition of the JITC Digest. Many of our readers in the northern hemisphere may be using this time to take advantage of the last few weeks of summer before the academic year resumes. Hopefully you are applying sunscreen regularly if you are reading this edition of the digest at the beach or another idyllic locale.

Looking ahead, I’m thrilled to share the launch of JITC’s Peer Review Mentorship Program. You can find more details in this month’s special feature about this exciting new initiative to help train the next generation of reviewers who will help sustain the quality of our journal and the field as a whole for many years to come.

Our article highlights this month draw from the worlds of microbiology and mathematics—illustrating the power of very small biological entities and very big numbers to optimize immunological control of cancer.

Rebecca A Bekker and colleagues offer a hypothesis paper proposing the use of mathematical approaches to conceptualize the effect of various immune and chemotherapies on the tumor immune microenvironment and tailor combination approaches on a per-patient basis.

In characterizing a vaccine strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as an intravesical treatment for bladder cancer, Eduardo Moreo et al elucidate the specific bacterial virulence factors and a requirement for host type 1 conventional dendritic cells for antitumor efficacy.

Teresa T Nguyen and colleagues provide preclinical rationale for combination oncolytic virus therapy plus IDO inhibition for the treatment of recurrent glioma.

And finally, the first spatial mapping of the lung cancer microbiota is described by Abigail Wong-Rolle et al, who find bacteria to be enriched in tumor cells with an accompanying upregulation of genes involved in immune exclusion.

I hope you enjoy the articles in this month’s digest and I encourage early career professionals to consider applying to the Peer Review Mentorship Program.

Best wishes,

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