Immuno-Oncology: How to get the immune system to beat cancer

Linda Partridge works on the biology of ageing. Her research is directed to understanding the mechanisms by which healthy lifespan can be extended in laboratory model organisms and humans. Her work has focused in particular on the role of nutrient-sensing pathways, such as the insulin/insulin-like growth factor signalling pathway, and on the role of diet.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Royal Society's Croonian Prize Lecture, and was honoured with a DBE for Services to Science in 2009. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is Director of the Institute of Healthy Ageing at UCL and the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Germany.

Klaus Urbahns is head of Discovery & Development Technologies in Merck Healthcare’s R&D division. His laboratories are based in Darmstadt, Boston, Tel Aviv, Rome and Turin. Klaus is also serving on advisory roles for Malaria Ventures, the Lead Discovery Center (Max-Planck) and the Merck-Venture fund. He has been involved in immuno-oncology research and development for the last ten years. Prior to his role at Merck, Klaus has worked at AstraZeneca in the UK and Sweden and at Bayer in Germany and Japan. Klaus has studied at the Universities of Kiel and Freiburg and holds a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Frankfurt.

Dr Swanton completed his MD/PhD in 1999 at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories and Cancer Research UK clinician/scientist medical oncology training in 2008. He combines his laboratory research at the Francis Crick Institute with clinical duties focused on biological mechanisms of cancer drug resistance. Dr Swanton was made Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in April 2011 and Chair in Personalized Cancer Medicine and Consultant Thoracic Medical Oncologist at UCL Hospitals in November 2011. Dr Swanton is the Chief Investigator of the CRUK TRACERx lung cancer evolution study and was awarded the Royal College of Physicians Goulstonian lecture and Graham Bull Prize for Clinical Sciences in 2013, Fellow of the European Academy of Cancer Sciences in 2013, and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. Dr Swanton was awarded the Jeremy Jass Prize (2014), Stand up to Cancer Translational Cancer Research Prize (2015), Glaxo SmithKline Biochemical Society Prize in recognition of distinguished research leading to new advances in medical science and the Ellison-Cliffe Medal and Lecture, Royal Society of Medicine (2016). He was appointed Napier Professor in Cancer by the Royal Society in 2016, Cancer Research UK’s Chief Clinician in 2017.  He was awarded the 2016 San Salvatore Foundation prize, and elected an EMBO member in 2017.

Dr Jo Brewer has served as Senior Vice President, Allogeneic Research since December 2019.  She leads Adaptimmune’s efforts to generate new, off-the-shelf, cell therapies for people with cancer, as well as developing the manufacturing processes for these therapies.  

Jo has more than 19 years of experience in immunotherapy research, specifically preclinical development of assets from the early research phase towards first-in-human trials.  She was one of the founding scientists at Adaptimmune, working on the early SPEAR T-cell programs.  She built multiple research teams over 11 years aimed at improving the efficacy of SPEAR T-cell therapies through translational learning leading to the development of multiple next-gen approaches, the first of which is being tested in the SURPASS trial. Dr Brewer holds a MA and PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Stan Frankel is hematologist/oncologist who focuses on drug development and clinical trials. He consults to the biopharma industry and investors.

Stan received his B.A. from Harvard College and his M.D. from Northwestern University. He received his post-graduate training at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where he was Chief Fellow. He had an academic practice in stem cell transplantation and hematologic malignancy clinical trials at Roswell Park Cancer Center, Georgetown University and the University of Maryland. Dr. Frankel is a Diplomate of the  American Board of Internal Medicine with subspecialty credentials in Hematology and Medical Oncology. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and licensed to practice in New York. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He is a member of  ACP, AACR, ASTCT, ASCO, ASH, EHA, and ESMO. He has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers.

Attilio Bondanza is Head of Cell Therapy Clinical at Astrazeneca Oncology R&D in Cambridge UK. Prior to that, he was Senior Global Program Leader at Novartis Basel CH, where he contributed to the clinical development of tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), the first CAR-T cell therapy approved in the US, and initiated several other new CAR-T cell programs. Before joining the industry, Attilio was Associate Professor at the San Raffaele University of Milano IT. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and holds a PhD in Transplantation Immunology. He has an H-index of 36 and is the inventor of several granted patents in the field of CAR-T cell therapy.

Professor Wargo’s career commitment is to advance the understanding and treatment of disease through science. In September 2013, Dr Wargo joined the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center after being recruited from Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School where she obtained her medical degree and completed two fellowships at the University of California and NIH in Surgical Oncology. Dr Wargo holds joint appointments in Surgical Oncology as a Melanoma surgeon and Genomic Medicine conducting her critical research in the field of microbiome and translational research. In 2019, Dr Wargo started a microbiome and translational research program at MD Anderson Cancer Center called PRIME TR “Program for Innovative Microbiome and Translational Research”.

Elaine Mardis, PhD is co-Executive Director of the Steve and Cindy Rasmussen Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and holds the Rasmussen Nationwide Foundation Endowed Chair of Genomic Medicine. She also is Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.  Educated at the University of Oklahoma with a BS in Zoology and a PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr Mardis did postgraduate work in industry at BioRad Laboratories. She was a member of the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine from 1993-2016. Dr Mardis has authored over 380 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has been listed since 2013 as one of the most highly cited researchers in the world by Thompson Reuters. Dr Mardis was given the Morton K. Schwartz award from the American Association for Clinical Chemistry in 2016 and the Heath Memorial Award from MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2020. Dr Mardis is the Immediate Past AACR President. She was elected a Fellow of the AACR Academy, and was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine in 2019.

Dr Eric Quemeneur is a biochemist (PhD 1989, HDR 1999) and industrial pharmacist (PharmD 1988). His scientific and professional experience have developed in the fields of protein engineering, toxicology, and more recently immunotherapy and virology. He joined Transgene at the end of 2014 to renovate the company’s product and technology portfolio, and to boost its open innovation policy. Major achievements have been the launch of the invirIO™ platform for armed oncolytic viruses, the myVAC™ program for personalized neoantigen-based cancer vaccines, and key strategic partnerships with major pharma or AI companies. Prior to Transgene, he held various research direction positions at the CEA Life Sciences Division, French Army Health Service, Biomerieux, and Hoechst A.G.