SITC 2014 Cancer Immunotherapy Day 1
National Harbor, MD – The 2014 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) annual meeting officially kicked off today, with a record-breaking 1,500 attendees. The organization has grown by 33% over the past year highlighting the explosive progress in the field, and the growing importance of SITC!
There was a lot of thought provoking science on display as researchers and translational scientists came from all around the world to share results and talk about the future.
What struck me at the meeting today was the collegiality and friendliness of all who are here. It’s exciting times in immunotherapy and immuno-oncology and everyone at the meeting is bound by a common goal of making a difference to the lives of cancer patients.
The President of SITC, Francesco Marincola (Sidra) quoted Winston Churchill in his introductory address:
“Now this is not the end.
It is not even the beginning of the end.
But, perhaps it is the end of the beginning.”
Dr Marincola’s choice of quote seemed to strike the right balance of where we are at today: there’s still a long way to go to optimize cancer immunotherapy treatments, but equally there’s been tremendous progress to reach the point we are at where there are durable long-term responses in many patients who would otherwise not be alive today.
What was the highlight of Day 1 of SITC 2014?
For me, this morning, it was the presentation by Marcel van den Brink (MSKCC) on the influence of the microbiome on graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) for which there’s been no effective new treatment for over 25 years:
Fascinating talk by Marcel van den Brink on GvHD & how gut microbiome influences survival post SCT #SITC2014 pic.twitter.com/DE1Mb1tLnV
— Pieter Droppert (@3NT) November 7, 2014
In the afternoon, it was the presentation by Roy Herbst (Yale) on the top ten lessons learned about immunotherapy for NSCLC.
One of the best presentations at #SITC2014 – Herbst says the winners in NSCLC will be the patients pic.twitter.com/jVgXQFJtZl
— Pieter Droppert (@3NT) November 7, 2014
It’s unfair to single out two presenters when there were multiple presentations and posters of note, but they stood out for me. If you’d like to read our more detailed notes from the road after Day 1 of SITC 2014, do log-in if you are already a subscriber.
This content is restricted to subscribers