Biotech Strategy Blog

Commentary on Science, Innovation & New Products with a focus on Oncology, Hematology & Immunotherapy

Posts tagged ‘CD4+ T cells’

Casa Milà, Barcelona

One of the pleasures of going to international cancer immunotherapy conferences is the opportunity to meet great scientists such as Sergio Quezada, PhD. He’s a Professor of Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy at University College London (UCL) Cancer Institute.

After his PhD, he joined the laboratory of Jim Allison at MSKCC in 2004, and as we heard from Nobel Laureate Sir Richard Roberts FRS on the last episode of the Novel Targets Podcast, working in the laboratory of a future Nobel Laureate is one of his 10 tongue in cheek suggestions to improve your chances of winning a Nobel prize!

Professor Quezada kindly spoke to BSB last week at the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) “Defense is the Best Attack” conference.

In Barcelona, we talked about the research done by his UCL group into regulatory T cells (Tregs) that led to the development of a novel first-in-class Treg depleting anti-CD25 antibody.

As Prof Quezada told BSB:

“This was the dream. It was basic biology, a big curiosity, lots of basic biology and being very stubborn and lots of luck. And now we have something that came out of PhD students and postdocs that some medic or nurse is gonna be injecting at the end of the year into a patient, so it’s really exciting. It’s really, really exciting!”

We enjoyed talking with Prof Quezada and appreciated the perspicacious insights he shared on where we’ve come from and where we may be going.

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Barcelona: What makes a great scientist is not accepting conventional wisdom or dogma but instead thinking differently, pursuing what data generated truly means, and asking if we can do things differently as a result?

Gaudi architecture, Barcelona

Current success in immuno-oncology new product development has been built on basic research done twenty and thirty years ago, when many didn’t believe in leveraging the power of the immune system therapeutically.

At the ongoing European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) “Defense is the Best Attack” meeting in Barcelona this week, many experts in the IO field are sharing novel findings on what may lead to future insights.

What were some of the key take-homes?

Subscribers can read our notes from some of the presentations that stood out at the meeting.

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National Harbor, MD – the 2015 annual meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) kicked off today with a series of workshops, and mini-symposia before the main meeting starts on Friday.

It is currently glorious weather for Maryland in November, almost too nice to be indoors, which probably means it’s going to be a cold winter for those who live up North!

Of note this afternoon/evening at SITC 2015 was an International Symposium on Cancer Immunotherapy entitled “Today’s Innovators, Tomorrow’s Leaders.”

Organized in collaboration with the World Immunotherapy Council (WIC), the symposium showcased up and coming researchers, each of whom had an expenses paid trip to SITC to present their work before an audience that included many of the “great and good” in cancer immunotherapy.  It was useful learn from the questions being asked from the floor too, further adding to the value of the session.

Dr Bernard A Fox (@BernardAFox), a past President of SITC, in his introduction acknowledged the vision behind it, and in particular, the contribution of Dr Nora Disis (@DrNDisis).

Today’s daily highlights post offers a few of my “take homes” from this afternoon. It doesn’t discuss unpublished data but some of the presenters went into more detail about posters they are presenting later this week which was interesting.

The symposium was highly enjoyable and well worth attending. Hopefully, it will be repeated at next year’s SITC annual meeting.

Tomorrow here in National Harbor, I’m looking forward to the workshop on new perspective for target antigens in the changing immunotherapy landscape. That will be the subject of tomorrow’s daily digest. Stay tuned!

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