SC1: Cancer Immunotherapy

Sergio A. Quezada, Ph.D., Professorial Research Fellow, Research Haematology, University College London Cancer Institute

Andrea van Elsas, Ph.D., CSO, BioNovion B.V.

Distinct from other paradigms in medical oncology, cancer immunotherapy aims to treat the patient’s immune system. During the past few years, antibodies targeting T-cell checkpoint proteins demonstrated unprecedented clinical responses and long-term benefit in patients diagnosed with melanoma and other advanced cancers. Beyond anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4, other pathways and therapeutic agents are rapidly being translated to clinical practice alone or in combination approaches.

Attend this short course to obtain an overview of:

• Clinically validated and novel targets and modalities
• What we can learn from clinical success and failure
• Current understanding why some patients are responding to checkpoint inhibitors and others are not
• Personalised cancer vaccines
• Rational combinations and why these are necessary
• Outlook for immunotherapy as a treatment for cancer

Speaker Biographies

Sergio A. Quezada, Ph.D., Professorial Research Fellow, UCL Cancer Institute

Dr. Sergio Quezada is a Professorial Research Fellow and Group Leader at UCL Cancer Institute in London where he heads the Immune Regulation and Tumour Immunotherapy Laboratory. Prior to this, Dr. Quezada worked with Dr. James Allison at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center studying the mechanisms governing anti-tumour T-cell immunity, and how these mechanisms can be manipulated for the generation of potent anti-tumour immune responses. Dr. Quezada’s research interest at UCL remains focused in the study of the mechanism of action of anti-CTLA-4, anti-PD-1 and other immune-modulatory antibodies targeting co-inhibitory and co-stimulatory pathways (including ICOS, 4-1BB, OX-40) and used as novel anticancer therapies. His group has particular interest in the evolution of the immune response to cancer, the impact of immune-modulatory antibodies in the fate and function of tumour reactive T cells, and the role that the tumour microenvironment plays in the response and resistance to such therapies. Dr Quezada is a Cancer Research UK Career Development fellow and the recipient of a Cancer Research Institute investigator Award.

Andrea van Elsas, CSO, BioNovion B.V.

Andrea van Elsas is a founder and CSO of BioNovion, a subsidiary to Aduro Biotech. He obtained his PhD in Leiden in 1996 on the molecular and analysis of the immune response to melanoma, and subsequently secured a post-doc grant from the Dutch Cancer Society to work with Jim Allison at UC Berkeley on the use and mode-of-action of anti-CTLA-4 to treat cancer in the mouse. In 1999, he joined R&D at Organon in the Netherlands, and a few years later moved back to the US in 2006 to help run a therapeutic antibody unit in Cambridge, MA, taking immune checkpoint antibody programs from discovery to early development. After Organon’s acquisition by Schering-Plough and supporting the integration of the oncology pipeline from both companies, he led the Immune Oncology Proof-of-Concept team. Following his return to the Netherlands and the acquisition by Merck, together with two former colleagues he started BioNovion in 2011, a company focused on therapeutic antibody discovery for Cancer Immunotherapy.