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The CAT’s meow: low-affinity CD19 CAR T cells show strong response with low toxicity in pediatric patients with ALL

Aiming to determine how the affinity of a CAR for its target impacts efficacy and toxicity associated with CAR T cell treatment, Ghorashian et al. developed a low-affinity single-chain variable fragment (scFv) targeting CD19, compared it directly to...

CD3 bispecific antibody-induced cytokine release is dispensable for cytotoxic T cell activity

To study cytokine release, Li and Piskol et al. used an immune competent HER2-positive spontaneous mammary tumor mouse model and a human PBMC in vitro model. In vitro and in vivo, primary, but not rep...

Defining HLA-II Ligand Processing and Binding Rules with Mass Spectrometry Enhances Cancer Epitope Prediction

To improve the accuracy of HLA-II ligand prediction, particularly for identification of neoantigens in tumors, Abelin, Harjanto, and Malloy et al. developed MAPTAC – a mono-allelic profiling method th...

Blockade of CTLA-4 and PD-1 Enhances adoptive T-cell therapy efficacy in an ICOS mediated manner

To improve outcomes of adoptive T cell therapy (ACT) for solid tumors, Shi et al. investigated dual blockade of CTLA-4 and PD-1 (CPB) with ACT in a transgenic gp100-CD8+ T cell tumor model. Combinatio...

Frequent Loss of IRF2 in Cancers Leads to Immune Evasion through Decreased MHC Class I Antigen Presentation and Increased PD-L1 Expression

Kriegsman et al. identified IRF2 as a transcriptional activator of components of the MHC-I pathway (including TAP2, ERAP1, and immunoproteasome subunits) and as a transcriptional repressor of PD-L1. L...

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Previous Digests

Silencing TAP makes the tumor a little louder

September 11, 2019

Tumors with high neoantigen burdens tend to respond well to immunotherapy, but patients whose tumors express few or no neoantigens may not derive the same benefits. Enhancing the immunogenicity of tumors in a way that is clinically relevant and...

Not redundant after all: improved T cell responses with dual PD-1 axis blockade in pancreatic cancer

September 4, 2019

Aiming to elucidate the role that neoantigens play in the response of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) to immunotherapy, particularly in a subset of patients with PDA that is infiltrated by T cells, Burrack et al. developed a new mouse...

Targeting CD30 helps dual-specificity CAR T cells improve themselves

August 21, 2019

In the hunt to expand the arsenal of checkpoint regulators, Hombach et al. investigated the possibility of targeting the CD30-CD30L axis. CD30 and/or CD30L can be expressed on a number of immune cells (T cells, B cells, and some...

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About ACIR

ACIR's mission is to fast-track Cancer Immunotherapy research by helping researchers stay on top of the new literature in this fast-moving and multifaceted field, fostering their creativity and productivity in bringing us ever closer to curing this deadly disease.

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The field of cancer immunotherapy has exploded in recent years, drawing on the creativity and experience of scientists, clinicians, and patient advocates. ACIR does an incredible job of bringing these groups together toward a common goal of eliminating cancer by disseminating important research findings to the community at large.

— James Allison, PhD

Professor and Chair, Department of Immunology; Executive Director, Immunotherapy Platform; Director, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy; and Vivian L. Smith Distinguished Chair-Immunology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

As a researcher bridging the science and clinical translation of the exciting discoveries of cancer immunotherapy, I applaud the efforts of ACIR to help me, my post-docs and students, and my colleagues keep up to date on all the key innovations driving this field. New knowledge continually refines our current thinking and ACIR keeps that new knowledge fresh and at our fingertips.

— Catherine Wu, MD, PhD

Professor of Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School; Institute Member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

There is a critical need to provide reliable information to physicians and researchers. Key limitations are the large amount of data that is being published and the multiple clinical trials available. I welcome the efforts by ACIR to make sense out of all this data and provide a reliable source of information for researchers in cancer immunotherapy.

— Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD

Professor of Medicine, Surgery, Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the University of California (UCLA); Director of the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC); Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) Center at UCLA

The work of ACIR is so beautifully targeted on something that has the potential of being truly useful even in the earliest stages. What a great idea!

— John Petricciani, MD

President of the International Alliance for Biological Standardization (IABS); Former Director of the Center for Biologics at FDA and former Chief Medical Officer of the Biologicals Unit at WHO

Our understanding of the interaction between the immune system and cancer cells, and also the ways to exploit this interaction clinically, is growing faster than ever before. There is no reliable source of information that can help clinicians and researchers in this field stay up-to-date, and by filling this gap, ACIR facilitates the development of effective cancer immunotherapies for an increasing number of patient groups.

— Ton Schumacher, PhD

Deputy Director of the Netherlands Cancer Institute; Professor of Immunotechnology at Leiden University, The Netherlands; Chief Scientific Officer of Kite Pharma EU; SU2C-CRI Immunotherapy Dream Team member

Cancer Immunotherapy is providing patients with novel and durable treatments and the number of available therapies keeps growing. The mission of ACIR is to accelerate the pace by which the field develops through mapping out the research and clinical landscapes and keeping track of key advances in the field. It has my total support!!

— Robert D. Schreiber, PhD

Alumni Endowed Professor of Pathology and Immunology and Professor of Molecular Microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine, MO; Director of the Washington University Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Programs; Associate Director of the Scientific Advisory Board to the CRI

I fully support the important initiative of ACIR. The field of cancer immunotherapy grows at an exciting pace. Staying on top of foundational discoveries in the field, which is conveniently processed on ACIR, is key for coming up with important new hypotheses about immunotherapeutic cancer treatment strategies.

— Glenn Dranoff, MD, PhD

Global Head of Immuno-Oncology, Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research

I fully endorse the mission of ACIR to provide a weekly synopsis of the scientific literature in cancer immunotherapy. The value of this approach has been clearly demonstrated by a program I have been involved in with the Prize4Life Foundation, which is dedicated to curing ALS. ALS Forum provides ALS research summaries as well as other content related to clinical trials and is widely used by the ALS research community to keep up to date.

— Tom Maniatis, PhD

Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) in New York, and Director of the University wide Columbia Precision Medicine Initiative (CPMI)

ACIR has identified a great way to meet the critical need of researchers and clinicians everywhere to stay up to date with the literature in the fast moving and life-saving field of cancer immunotherapy. This will be a fine living tribute to your son Matt and has the potential to help many future cancer victims!

— James S. Economou, MD, PhD

Beaumont Professor of Surgery, Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

I am pleased to voice my support for the mission of ACIR to keep cancer immunotherapy researchers up to date with the current advancements in the field. Given the magnitude of new information emerging from this field, I particularly appreciate their efforts to both identify and highlight the key advancements each week and to distill the new information to key take-away points that can be easily grasped.

— Nir Hacohen, PhD

Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Director, MGH Center for Cancer Immunology; Institute Member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

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