The development of checkpoint inhibitors and adoptive T cell therapies has led to remarkable recent achievements in cancer treatment with the induction of dramatic and durable responses in cancers traditionally thought to have poor outcomes. These accomplishments are heralding a new chapter in cancer that has changed treatment platforms and paradigms. Yet the success of these therapies, although significant, is still limited to subsets of patients.

PrIISM joined effort with the Tisch Cancer institute (our NCI designated Cancer center) to build a state of the art Cancer Immunology (CI) program that assembled basic and clinical immunologists with the common goal to develop scientifically-based strategies that will expand the current platforms and increase the potency of immunomodulatory approaches against cancer. CI members focus on ways to improve immunogenicity locally within the tumor microenvironment, increase tumor antigen presentation and reduce tumor-associated immunosuppression. These strategies have the potential to dramatically augment T cell-mediated anti-tumor immunity and are being tested by our group either alone or in combination with checkpoint inhibitor therapy.

Investigators with a major focus in cancer immunology include: Nina Bhardwaj, Joshua Brody, Brian Brown, Steven Burakoff, Bishuang Cai, Hearn Jay Cho, Diego Chowell, Jose C. Clemente, Sara Cuadrado-Castaño; David Dominguez-Sola, Yizhou Dong, Jeremiah Faith, Lucas Ferrai de Andrade, James L. M. Ferrara, Sacha Gnjatic, Ernesto Guccione, Dolores Hambardzumyan, Amir Horowitz, Alice O. Kamphorst, Sergio Lira, Marta Luksza, Thomas Marron, Miriam Merad, Jordi Ochando, Samir Parekh, Poulikos I. Poulikakos, Daniel Puleston, Hélène Salmon, Robert Samstein, Alexander M. Tsankov, Nicolas Vabret, Guo-Cheng Yuan, Edgar Gonzalez-Kozlova, Dmitriy Zamarin, Eric Wambre