A Message from the President
Dear Colleagues,
I would like to open this month’s message, my last as SITC President, with a warm thank you to all of the attendees, supporters, organizers, faculty, staff and other volunteers who helped make our society’s 35th Anniversary Annual Meeting & Pre-Conference Programs (SITC 2020) a record breaking success. More than 5,200 professionals in the cancer research community gathered virtually from Nov. 9–14 to present and hear the latest data in the lab and advances achieved in the clinic in immunotherapy.
While we were unable to share and celebrate the latest advances in our field in person – more individuals attended SITC 2020 than any other society program in our history. A fitting milestone as we marked 35 years of SITC contributions in immunotherapy and tumor immunology.
To mark our 35th anniversary, SITC honored more awardees than ever before during its Annual Meeting, This year, SITC presented its Lifetime Achievement Award, a new honor for the society, to Tara Withington, CAE. For more than 20 years as SITC’s Executive Director, Tara has devoted all of herself to help fulfill our society’s mission and achieve new heights. Her vision helped SITC launch countless integral SITC initiatives including the connectED online education platform, the SITC Sparkathon, the certificate in cancer immunotherapy program, Advances in Cancer Immunotherapy™ regional education programs and many others.
Congratulations to all of the SITC 2020 Award recipients. Click here for a complete listing of those honored, including the dozens of young investigators who received awards this fall. And don’t forget, for all those who registered for SITC 2020, you can access program presentations through the end of the year via on-demand video in the SITC 2020 virtual platform.
The virtual meeting allowed SITC to expand our Annual Meeting programming to a truly global audience. This past year, SITC’s membership base grew to represent more than 60 countries around the world. Increasing global access to immunotherapy is one of the society’s key strategic priorities. One way we are seeking to achieve this goal will be through this month’s virtual workshop, Global Access to Cancer Immunotherapy: Closing the Gaps. Organized through the guidance and strategic vision of the SITC Global Access and Impact Committee, which is chaired by David Kaufman, MD, PhD, this workshop will offer leaders an opportunity to discuss and define minimal infrastructure requirements for safe and effective IO administration across the globe. Congruent with SITC’s mission to ensure that all immunotherapy advancements are freely available, materials from this workshop will be available on SITC Cancer Immunotherapy connectED after the conclusion of the workshop. We invite you to view the materials later in December and participate in future discussions concerning international IO accessibility.
Have you completed your holiday shopping? As we close out 2020, I ask that you consider including the Forward Fund in your year-end giving. Making a donation to SITC’s Forward Fund, supports the future of the field through grants and awards for young investigators. You can make the gift in honor or in memory of a loved one and help advance the Society’s mission. They’ll receive a card notifying them of your generous gift and you’ll receive a gift recipient for tax purposes. You can also purchase a CheckPoints T-shirt or Mask as a truly unique gift for someone you care about. If you missed the CheckPoints at SITC 2020, you can watch their happy hour performances here. Further, if you are completing some holiday shopping on Amazon, use SITC’s Amazon Smile hyperlink, which triggers a 0.5 percent donation from the online retailer to our society on eligible purchases. We appreciate your kindness as we close out the calendar year.
As we approach the final days of 2020, I’m pleased to pass the baton of SITC leadership to fellow colleague and friend Patrick Hwu, MD. I look forward to seeing and supporting Dr. Hwu’s tenure as SITC President as he helps make the next two years for SITC our best yet.
Happy holidays to the entire SITC family.
Sincerely,
Mario Sznol, MD
SITC President
Virtually Attend the 2020 SITC Cancer Immunotherapy Winter School
SITC is pleased to host its third annual Cancer Immunotherapy Winter School, a comprehensive cancer immunotherapy education program, which will be held virtually on Feb. 22–24, 2021. Taught by leading experts in the field, this program provides a deep understanding of the core principles of tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy as well as developing areas in the field including biomarker technology, validation and clinical integration; clinical trial design, data analysis and considerations for combination therapies.
Winter School Organizers:
- Christian Capitini, MD – University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Leisha A. Emens, MD, PhD – UPMC Hillman Cancer Center
- Daniel Powell, PhD – University of Pennsylvania
The Cancer Immunotherapy Winter School program is tailored to early-to-mid career scientists and clinicians in the field of cancer immunotherapy working in academic, clinical, industry and government settings as well as those new to the field. The curriculum covers the fundamentals of cancer immunotherapy and features separate tracks, including clinical and research, allowing participants to tailor their experience by selecting the educational path most relevant to their learning goals.
Click here to view registration rates for this program and then register now to confirm your attendance.
Explore the SITC Clinical Practice Guidelines
SITC Cancer Immunotherapy Guidelines are a collection of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) developed by multi-disciplinary panels of leading experts help healthcare providers determine when and how to best use immunotherapy to treat their patients. The evidence- and expert consensus-based recommendations within the CPGs are developed using the Institute of Medicine's 2011 "Standards for Developing Trustworthy Clinical Practice Guidelines" as a model to ensure a fair, transparent and balanced process. Offering practical guidance on topics including biomarkers, treatment selection, response monitoring, toxicity management and quality of life, the SITC CPGs are vital resource for the oncology community.
Published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC), the society’s open access, peer-reviewed online journal, the guidelines are freely available to the community. Additionally, SITC hosts free, live webinars for each guideline as an added opportunity for practitioners to deepen their learning on immunotherapy. This past year, reflecting the recent advancements in immunotherapy for blood cancers, SITC published two standalone guidelines on hematologic malignancies, specifically, multiple myeloma and acute leukemia, and guideline on lymphoma has been accepted for publication in JITC. Also publishing soon is a CPG specifically devoted to toxicity management for immune effector cell therapies.
As immunotherapy increasingly becomes the standard of care and moves into earlier lines of treatment for a variety of tumor types, several additional CPGs are currently in development, representing both updates to previously published guidelines as well as covering new disease settings.
Published SITC Guidelines:
SITC Guidelines in Development: