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