This year, 2025, marks a special milestone: ACIR’s 10th anniversary! And we celebrate it with the announcement of a leadership transition.
Dear Readers,
The idea for ACIR was born in early 2015, just a few months after my son Matt passed from metastatic melanoma. That profoundly heartbreaking experience fueled our mission to take action against this devastating disease. By December of the same year, Ute Burkhardt and I had co-founded ACIR and were officially incorporated! Our first weekly newsletter was published in March 2017, which we’ve kept up ever since. With nearly 5,000 subscribers and a very high opening rate of our newsletter, plus around 60,000 unique visitors to our website yearly, it’s evident that our efforts are resonating with the immunotherapy community. We now routinely attend and report on national and international scientific conferences, a major point of interest for our readers. And we launched our companion site, Understanding Cancer Immunotherapy Research, to help educate the lay audience, patients and interested outside scientists on this complex field.
The feedback we’ve received from both giants and emerging talents in the field has been overwhelmingly positive, affirming our vision and the value of our work.
As we step into our next decade, I’m delighted to announce that Ute Burkhardt has been appointed President, ACIR/UCIR. This is a title I have held since the start but which she now richly deserves. All of ACIR/UCIR’s great success would not have been possible without her invaluable contributions, for which I am very grateful. Together, we have built a great legacy in memory of Matt!
All this would also have not been done without our dedicated and talented team - our Senior Scientific Writer and Illustrator Lauren Hitchings; our Senior Communications and Outreach Coordinator, Gaëlle Llambi; our irreplaceable volunteer and freelance writers; and of course our loyal readers. We are sincerely grateful for your support!
Please join me in celebrating the first decade of ACIR and congratulating Ute for her well-deserved promotion! Here’s to a future filled with continued success and exciting advancements in cancer immunotherapy!
Ed Fritsch
President of the Fritsch Foundation
