CIC to host Scientific Colloquium on tumor immunotherapy in National Harbor, MD

The Cancer Immunotherapy Consortium (CIC), a program of the nonprofit Cancer Research Institute, will host its 2011 Scientific Colloquium March 17-19, 2011, at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center in National Harbor, MD. This year's meeting, titled "Schedule and Dose for Combination Therapy," will include a series of plenary lectures from academic and industry leaders in tumor immunology and immunotherapy. The meeting will also feature a special session and roundtable discussion on the academia-industry interface within the emerging field of immuno-oncology, with the goal of clearly defining—and outlining possible solutions to—the key challenges as viewed from the perspectives of stakeholders within the academic, industrial, nonprofit, and regulatory sectors.

Over the past year, two important clinical successes have stood out within the field of tumor immunotherapy: the FDA approval in April 2010 of sipuleucel-T (Provenge®), the therapeutic vaccine for prostate cancer; and demonstration in June 2010 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology that the anti-CTLA-4 monoclonal antibody ipilimumab (Yervoy™) is the first treatment ever shown to extend the lives of patients with advanced melanoma. As these and other treatments that target the immune system enter the clinic, it will be necessary for oncologists to understand how to combine them with existing standards of care such as chemotherapy and radiation, as well as with other experimental agents, to achieve the best outcomes for patients. Determining the optimal schedule and dose for each combination, however, is critical to ongoing success in the field and will require close investigation and collaboration among a broad array of stakeholders. To date, the field has not undertaken a systematic effort to determine the parameters for collaborative clinical drug development of combination therapies that include cancer immunotherapies.

The 2011 Scientific Colloquium of the Cancer Immunotherapy Consortium will bring together key stakeholders to address this challenge, share the most current data on the administration of combination approaches, and work to identify lessons that can help guide future combination therapy studies.

Rafi Ahmed, Ph,.D., the Georgia Research Alliance Scholar in Vaccine Research and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Emory University, will give the keynote presentation, "Impact of dose and schedule on effector and memory T cell generation," during the morning plenary session on March 17. On March 18, Mark M. Davis, Director of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation, and Infection at Stanford University School of Medicine, will give the keynote address titled, "The Human Immunology Project: Understanding the role of the immune system in health and disease."

Other topics include:

• Studying Vaccination Schedules: Lessons from Infectious Disease
• Schedule and Dose: Relevance for Combination Therapy
• Immune Therapy Combined with Other Immune Therapy, Chemotherapy, Targeted Therapies, or Local Therapies
• Academia-Industry Interface: Crosstalk to Shape the Future of Immuno-Oncology
• Treg (Regulatory T cell) Homeostasis
• Immunological Monitoring

Speakers and panel discussion participants include:

• Rafi Ahmed, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
• Charlotte Ariyan, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
• Michael D. Becker, MD Becker Partners LLC, Newtown, PA
• Margaret Callahan, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
• Stephen Creekmore, National Cancer Institute-Frederick, Frederick, MD
• Tania Crombet Ramos, Centre of Molecular Immunology, Havana, Cuba
• Jean-Marie Cuillerot, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Westport, CT
• Leisha Emens, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD
• Tito Fojo, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD
• Silvia C. Formenti, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY
• Mark Frohlich, Dendreon Corporation, Seattle, WA
• Jeffrey Gelfand, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
• Gisela González Marinello, Centre of Molecular Immunology, Havana, Cuba
• James L. Gulley, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD
• Stephen Hodi, Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, Milwaukee, WI
• Axel Hoos, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Westport, CT
• Christoph Huber, Association for Cancer Immunotherapy, Mainz, Germany
• Adam Kolom, CRI Cancer Vaccine Acceleration Fund, New York, NY
• Hyam Levitsky, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD
• Ron Levy, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA
• Yves Levy, University of Paris Etc, Publique-Hopitaus de Paris, French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis, Paris, France
• Nils Lonberg, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Westport, CT
• Michele Maio, Italian Network for Tumor Biotherapy, Milan, Italy
• Svetomir Markovic, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
• Jens-Peter Marschner, Merck Serono, Geneva, Switzerland
• Cornelis J.M. Melief, Leiden University Medical Center and ISA Pharmaceuticals, Leiden, The Netherlands
• Martin G. Myers, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX
• Javier Pinilla-Ibarz, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL
• Jill O'Donnell-Tormey, Cancer Research Institute, New York, NY
• Raj Puri, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Washington, DC
• Antoni Ribas, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
• Lupe G. Salazar, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
• Rafick Pierre Sékaly, Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute, Port St. Lucie, Florida
• Shalini Sharp, Agenus, Lexington, MA
• Frederic Triebel, Immutep S.A., Orsay, France
• Robert Vonderheide, Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA
• Jedd D. Wolchok, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
• Laurence Zitvogel, Institut Gustave-Roussy, Villejuif, France