A Message from the President
Every year, SITC leadership and key stakeholders gather for a strategic retreat, and earlier this month we did just that. Representatives from industry, academia, government, and the patient community were invited to the retreat to revisit SITC’s 2011 manuscript, “Defining the critical hurdles in cancer immunotherapy.” Over the last 10-plus years, our field has undergone an incredible transformation, and during the retreat we dove deep into the current challenges limiting progress toward the next major IO breakthrough.
Using the ‘hurdles’ manuscript as a backbone, the retreat attendees helped define the biggest challenges facing us in the field today, and began to identify opportunities for all of us to meet them head-on. The findings from the retreat are being collated into a series of manuscripts that we hope to publish in our journal, The Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer (JITC), early in the new year.
I’m incredibly grateful to the SITC leaders who planned, presented at, and will author the forthcoming manuscripts, including Drs. Tullia C. Bruno – University of Pittsburgh, Ana Carrizosa Anderson – Harvard Medical School, Christian M. Capitini – University of Wisconsin-Madison, Deborah E. Collyar, BSci – Patient Advocates in Research, Avery D. Posey Jr. – University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Pedro J. Romero – Novigenix, Ann W. Silk – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Jennifer Wargo – The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Thank you also to all of the SITC leaders who participated and contributed to the retreat proceedings, and to SITC staff for their critical support.
During the retreat, we also reviewed project proposals from SITC members and committees related to annual meeting sessions and workshops, virtual summits, consensus meetings and more. It is inspiring to see so many proposals and innovative ideas from our membership, and I look forward to seeing many of the projects come to life. If you have an exciting idea you’d like to share, mark your calendar for this fall when the next call for proposals opens.
Top of mind is also our Late-breaking Abstract deadline of September 6 for the SITC 2023 annual meeting in San Diego. It was quite clear during the retreat that the potential for discovery and innovation in our community is immense. I have no doubt that the cutting-edge data you submit to SITC 2023 will drive the next wave of practice-changing immunotherapeutics.
Sincerely,
Leisha A. Emens, MD, PhD
SITC President