Rational Combinations 360° Seeks Improved Immunotherapy Approaches for Patients

"The entire field believes that combinations are the future,” said Jill O’Donnell-Tormey, PhD, the chief executive officer and scientific director of the Cancer Research Institute, earlier this month at Xconomy's "What's Hot in Cancer Immunotherapy 2017" forum. “The question is, ‘How are we going to get there?’”

This week, the top immunotherapy experts from both academia and industry will seek to answer that question during the 2^nd annual Rational Combinations 360° conference, which will be held on June 28-29 at the New York Academy of Medicine.

Over the course of those two days, the conference—which is being hosted by the Conference Forum and co-chaired by Patrick Hwu, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Ian McCaffery, PhD, of Corvus Pharmaceuticals—will bring together diverse stakeholders to address the latest clinical advancements and business considerations of immunotherapy combination approaches to help patients with a wider range of cancers.

Among the specific focuses of the various sessions include: de-risking of combination immunotherapies; clinical combination immunotherapies; immuno resistance – drivers for combination therapy; novel technologies and emerging biomarkers; clinical manifestations of immunological toxicities; and business aspects for combination immunotherapy.

As an educational partner of Rational Combinations 360°, the Cancer Research Institute is looking forward to following (and passing on to you) the discussion highlights from the meeting, including insights from:

• Dr. Hwu on rational combinations of targeted and immunotherapy
• Roger S. Lo, MD, a former CRI-funded CLIP investigator from 2014-2016, on resistance mechanisms to checkpoint blockade in melanoma
• Hyam I. Levitsky, MD, on CAR-T-associated neurotoxicity: pathophysiological learnings and prophylactic strategies
• Arjun V. Balar, MD, on combination immunotherapy for metastatic bladder cancer
• Neil H. Segal, MD, PhD, on immune targeting in gastrointestinal malignancies.

Check back next week to catch our recap of this important meeting!