2022 International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference Highlights from Day 2

The second day of the 2022 CRI-ENCI-AACR International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference (CICON22) started off by delving deeper into the myeloid cells highlighted during Day 1 of the conference. In contrast to yesterday’s session that focused on their immunosuppressive capabilities, the first session of the second day focused on myeloid cells’ ability to stimulate and support adaptive immune responses against cancer.

Following this discussion, the fourth session of CICON22 dissected the complex nature of tumor heterogeneity as well as our as well efforts to monitor and characterize cancer and immune cells. The fifth session brought together a panel that debated the merits and shortcomings of various preclinical models, and other efforts to improve our ability to translate immunotherapy treatments into the clinic.

To recap the day’s highlights and what you need to know from Day 2 of CICON22, we spoke with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Stefani Spranger, PhD, a former CRI postdoctoral fellow, and Elsa Anagnostou, MD, PhD, a CRI Clinical Accelerator Investigator at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Dr. Stefani Spranger is the Howard S. and Linda B. Stern Career Development Professor and Assistant Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as well as a member of the Ludwig Center at MIT, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the Ragon Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Elsa Anagnostou is the director of the Thoracic Oncology Biorepository and the co-leader of the molecular tumor board at Johns Hopkins Medicine, as well as an assistant professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins’ Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. She also leads the Molecular Oncology laboratory at Hopkins, where she seeks to understand the genomic factors of response and resistance to immunotherapy by using innovative tools to analyze tumor and immune evolution. To that end, she is currently leading a CRI-funded trial that is exploring whether blood tests might enable doctors to detect immunotherapy responses in patients earlier, which we will discuss more soon.

Check back later for our coverage of Day 3 at CICON22!