The Awards Ceremony will recognize annual award recipients, presented by SITC President James Gulley, MD, PhD, FACP.

The 40th Anniversary Annual Meeting Keynote Address will be given by Jennifer Wargo, MD, MMSc from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Wargo’s presentation: "Targeting the Microbiome to Promote Health and End Cancer" will be followed by time for questions from the audience. 

Neuroimmune communication in cancer pathology and therapeutic responses remains an area that is poorly understood. This session aims to bridge the central nervous system and the periphery by focusing on neuro-immune communication in solid tumors highlighting it as an untapped opportunity for future therapeutic approaches. We will explore neuron-intrinsic, tumor intrinsic, and drug-associated neuromodulation of the tumor microenvironment and immune responses related to cancer immunotherapy in both preclinical and translational research settings.

This 45-minute session will highlight three selected Late-breaking Abstracts who will each showcase their work in a 15-minute oral presentation.

This fast-paced session will feature six oral presentations from select basic science abstracts with time for Q&A. 

Coming Soon

This fast-paced session will feature six oral presentations from select clinical science abstracts with time for Q&A. 

This session will explore the current use of perioperative immunotherapy, emerging biomarkers to guide treatment decision making, and the scientific potential of the neoadjuvant space to elucidate mechanisms of action of novel immunotherapies.

Immunotherapies, including immune checkpoint inhibitors, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and CAR-T cell therapies, depend heavily on a healthy gut barrier and a diverse gut microbiome for optimal efficacy. Dysbiosis, or an imbalance in gut microbial composition and function, can diminish immunotherapy responses by altering immune cell activation, trafficking and metabolic output. New diagnosis tools have been reported to assess gut dysbiosis. Key microbial metabolites such as short-chain fatty acids and modified bile acids shape host immunity and influence cancer immunosurveillance in some tissues. Emerging strategies to restore a balanced microbiome and boost therapy efficacy include dietary interventions, prebiotics, live biotherapeutics, and faecal microbiota transplantation. Four speakers will cover these chapters of defining gut dysbiosis, analyzing its functional consequences on homeostasis and cancer immunity and proposing compensatory microbiota-centered interventions.

Cancer remains a major global health challenge, with poor outcomes in advanced stages highlighting the urgent need for earlier and more effective interventions. Immune evasion is a hallmark of cancer across all types, and strategies that reprogram host immunity—either to prevent cancer (immune prevention) or to halt the progression of precancers (immune interception)—offer promising avenues to reduce cancer incidence, morbidity, and mortality. Immunoprevention has already achieved remarkable success in virus-associated cancers, such as those caused by hepatitis B virus and human papillomavirus, demonstrating its potential. In recent years, pioneering research in non-virus-related premalignancies—such as lung, colorectal, and gynecologic cancers—has laid the groundwork for broader application of immune-based prevention strategies. Encouragingly, early clinical trial data are emerging in high risk populations, including those involving vaccines, immune checkpoint inhibitors, and agents targeting inflammasome pathways. This session will highlight some of these ongoing studies with the ultimate goal of shedding light on the future of immune-based cancer prevention and interception, with the potential to transform cancer control across multiple tumor types.

This session will inform attendees on the unique regulatory aspects of developing immunotherapies, including both adoptive cell therapies and immune checkpoint inhibitors, for childhood cancers drawing on experiences from academia, industry and government. Differences in the tumor immune microenvironment in pediatric and adult cancers will be reviewed.  Innate (CAR-NKT) and adaptive (CAR-T) immune cell biology, manufacturing and monitoring will also be discussed.

Selected abstracts will be presented in 15 minute oral presentations.

With a global population of older adults that’s projected to double by 2050, combined with the significantly increased cancer incidence in patients who are >60 years of age, it’s critical to understand how age affects tumor-immune cell interactions to achieve maximum immunotherapeutic efficacy. This session will highlight emerging research and promising therapeutic strategies that address challenges in cancer immunology across the lifespan.

Nerves recently emerged as a critical component of the tumor microenvironment. The immune system integrates vast non-immune signals, sensing and responding to nerves and neurotransmitters. Nerves elicit pro- and anti-tumor immunity in context-specific malignancies. Precise neuroimmune interactions in cancer pathology and therapeutic response remain largely unstudied. Beyond local tumor outcomes, neuroimmune crosstalk regulates external signals from the gut microbiome and immunotherapies. This session highlights work identifying key neuroimmune receptors, signaling arcs, and clinical discoveries in cancer neuroimmunity. Immunosuppression is a key challenge in cancer research. Multidisciplinary, translational research is required to promote anti-tumor immunity and immunotherapy efficacy via neuroimmune modulation.

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a highly complex and dynamic ecosystem, where diverse immune cell subsets interact to regulate tumor progression, immune surveillance, and response to therapy. Among these, regulatory immune populations—including regulatory T cells, myeloid cells, and B cells—can play multifaceted roles that can either support or suppress anti-tumor immunity. A comprehensive understanding of each subset’s function and interplay is essential for the rational design of effective immunotherapies.

This session will explore recent advances in our understanding of regulatory immune subsets in tumors, focusing on their phenotypic diversity, dynamics, and functional crosstalk within the TME through progression and therapy. By examining the complexity of these populations individually and in context, the session will highlight the need for integrative approaches to identify therapeutic targets and improve patient outcomes.

Immunotherapy has dramatically changed the treatment of many different cancers including broad activity of immune checkpoint blockers against both solid and hematologic tumors as well as deep and durable responses with T cell based therapies in blood cancers and more recently in limited solid tumor indications.  Looking forward, next generation approaches across cancer immunotherapy platforms are showing great promise.  This includes exciting results with bispecific antibodies target immune checkpoints and other immune modulatory pathways (eg, PD-1 + VEGF), T cell engagers, engineered oncolytic viral therapies, and movement of B-cell depleting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells into autoimmune diseases. This session will cover recent data from these next gen approaches and include a panel discussion on the state of the cancer "and beyond" immunotherapy field including both opportunities and obstacles for developing the next wave of breakthrough therapeutics.

Selected abstracts will be presented in 15 minute oral presentations.

The official start of the second full day begins with a welcome from one of the Organizers behind the Annual Meeting programming. 

The Coming Renaissance of Cancer Immunotherapy
Ira Mellman, PhD, FAACR, FAIO – Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Medici Therapeutics

The heterogeneity of tumors presents one of the most significant challenges in immuno-oncology. Traditional radiological techniques and biopsies subjected to immunohistochemical stains have inherent limitations in capturing the full complexity of the disease. Radiomics, a field that uses AI to extract quantitative features from medical images, offers a non-invasive solution to provide deeper insights for diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment. By quantifying tumor characteristics, radiomics can improve patient stratification, identify likely responders to specific immunotherapies, and serve as an early biomarker for treatment response. This session will explore the current state and future potential of radiomics to advance immuno-oncology (IO) development and personalize therapy selection. We will consider their application and the steps necessary to fully integrate with the essential biomarkers in IO.

B cells play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of many immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, and insights from cancer immunology are increasingly shaping therapeutic strategies. This session will explore the intersection of autoimmunity and oncology, highlighting emerging data on B–cell–directed therapies, their mechanisms, and their clinical applications. Experts will discuss the evolving understanding of autoimmune disease biology, review current and next-generation B cell–targeted treatments—including their toxicities and ongoing clinical trials—and examine how these approaches may inform both rheumatology and cancer care.

This fast-paced session will feature six oral presentations from select basic science abstracts with time for Q&A. 

This fast-paced session will feature six oral presentations from select clinical abstracts with time for Q&A.

The panel discussion will bring together leaders from key research funding agencies that are actively shaping the cancer research landscape. The discussion will focus on sustaining momentum in cancer research and discussing funding models to accelerate discovery and drive therapeutic breakthroughs.

This 75-minute session will highlight five selected Late-breaking Abstracts who will each showcase their work in a 15-minute oral presentation.

While CAR T-cell therapies have transformed treatment for blood cancers, their success in solid tumors has been limited. This session will focus on emerging cellular therapies beyond CAR T cells, including novel forms of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), CAR-monocytes, and emerging TCRs. Novel strategies to enhance tumor targeting, overcome the immunosuppressive microenvironment, and improve persistence and safety will be highlighted. Attendees will gain insights into the latest preclinical and clinical developments shaping the future of cellular immunotherapy for solid tumors.

It is now evident that metabolism—nutrient uptake, processing, and the myriad interactions by which energy and biomass is generated for cellular activity—is a major mechanism by which immune cells can be regulated. Emerging studies highlight the critical importance of immunometabolism in reprogramming immune cell state and fate, mediating cell-cell and cell-environment communications, and serving as novel targets for therapeutic intervention. As tumors produce a metabolically distinct environment, understanding how metabolism shapes immunity can have major implications for cancer immunology and immunotherapy. In this session, we will discuss how intrinsic metabolic pathways, extracellular environments, and diet can influence immune cell fate and function in the context of cancer, and how we can harness the knowledge on immunometabolic regulation to improve cell therapy for cancer. The goal of the session is to achieve a better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of immunometabolism and the opportunities for therapeutic applications for cancer.

A major breakthrough in cancer immunotherapy is the identification of non-canonical cancer antigens—tumor-specific targets derived from the dark genome and other unconventional sources. These antigens often evade central tolerance, may have tumor promoting functions, and be shared across cancer types, making them attractive for both vaccine and adoptive T cell therapies. Non-canonical antigens arise from previously overlooked genomic elements such as non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs, circRNAs, UTRs), out-of-frame translations, gene fusions, recurrent mRNA mis-splicing events, ERE, and HERV. Once considered biologically irrelevant, these sequences are now known to produce peptides that can be presented on HLA molecules and recognized by T cells. In this session, speakers will describe novel classes of cancer antigens that result from diverse molecular mechanisms which extend beyond simple point mutations. Finally, the actionability of these novel HLA-restricted non-canonical peptides will be highlighted using studies of T cell immunogenicity, active immunization, and TCR gene transfer.

Selected abstracts will be presented in 10-15 minute oral presentations. 

The official start of the last day begins with a welcome from one of the Organizers behind the Annual Meeting programming

Join SITC President James Gulley, MD, PhD, FACP for oral presentations from the top four scoring Young Investigator Award abstract authors. The Presidential Award recipient will be selected following the session and will be announced at the Awards Ceremony later that day at 11:30 a.m. - 12 p.m. ET.

Antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs) have long been heralded for their ability to selectively deliver cytotoxic agents to tumor cells. However, recent research is unveiling a broader therapeutic potential — one that extends beyond direct tumor cell killing to active engagement and modulation of the immune system. As next-generation ADCs evolve, their interplay with the tumor microenvironment, immune effector mechanisms, and combination immunotherapies is coming into sharper focus.

This session will explore the expanding immunological dimensions of ADCs, from novel payloads and pharmacokinetics to their emerging use alongside immune checkpoint blockade and other immunotherapies. Presentations will highlight how ADCs may potentiate anti-tumor immunity, reprogram the tumor microenvironment, and overcome resistance, even in immunologically silent tumors. Through mechanistic insight and clinical translation, this session aims to reframe ADCs not just as targeted cytotoxics, but as immune-modulatory agents in the immunotherapy era.

The Awards Ceremony will recognize Early Career Scientist award recipients, presented by SITC President James Gulley, MD, PhD, FACP.