2016 Cancer Immunotherapy Fellowship Awards

The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) is proud to announce the recipients of the SITC 2016 Cancer Immunotherapy Fellowship Awards. The Fellowship Award program was established through SITC's Forward Fund to support the development of young investigators in the field in order to cultivate the next generation of cancer immunotherapy experts.

SITC would like to thank all of the partnering organizations listed below who helped to make these awards possible. These outstanding recipients were recognized during a SITC Annual Meeting Award Ceremony on Saturday, November 12, 2016.

SITC-AstraZeneca Cancer Immunotherapy Clinical Fellowship in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) Recipient

Miguel F. Sanmamed, MD, PhD
Yale University, United States

Amount: $100,000 for one year
Project: “Identifying primary and acquired resistance mechanisms to PD-1/PD-L1 pathway blockade in non-small cell lung cancer patients using immune-patient-derived xenograft model”

SITC-Genentech Cancer Immunotherapy Clinical Fellowship in Related Biomarkers or Mechanism of Action (MOA) Recipient

Claire F. Friedman, MD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, United States

Amount: $40,000 for one year
Project: “The tumor immune microenvironment and response to CTLA-4 blockade in PD-1 refractory metastatic melanoma”

SITC-Bristol-Myers Squibb Cancer Immunotherapy Translational Fellowship

Benjamin Izar, MD, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, United States

Amount: $200,000 for two years
Project: “Dissecting the role of tissue-specific anti-tumor immunity following PD-1 blockade”

SITC-EMD Serono Cancer Immunotherapy Clinical Fellowship Recipient

Eric L. Smith, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, United States

Amount: $100,000 for one year
Project: “Investigating and manipulating the interplay between the tumor microenvironment and Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell therapy to generate durable remissions in multiple myeloma”

SITC-Genentech Cancer Immunotherapy Basic Fellowship in Related Biomarkers Recipient

Ada G. Blidner, MSc, PhD
Immunopathology Laboratory
Institute of Biology and Experimental Medicine, Argentina

Amount: $40,000 for one year
Project: “Unraveling the role of the galectin-1/glycan axis in T cell exhaustion and resistance to cancer immunotherapy”

SITC-MRA Young Investigator Award Recipient

Ping-Chih Ho, PhD
University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Amount: $225,000 for three years
Project: “Immunometabolic editing facilitates immune evasion in melanomas”

2016 NCI Immunotherapy Fellowship Recipient

This fellowship was co-sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and SITC and made possible in part by an educational grant from EMD Serono.

Julius Strauss, MD
National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, United States