2017 Archived Content
Monday November 13 | 09:00 – 12:00 | Morning
New Directions in Cancer Immunotherapy
Mark Cragg, Ph.D., Professor, Experimental Cancer Research, Antibody and Vaccine Group, Cancer Sciences, University of Southampton
Fred Arce Vargas, Ph.D. University College London Cancer Institute
Distinct from other paradigms in medical oncology, cancer immunotherapy aims to treat the patient’s immune system. During the past few years a number of different approaches have demonstrated unprecedented clinical responses and long-term benefit
in patients diagnosed with several types of malignancy. In addition to T-cell modulation and anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4, additional 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 approaches
- Current understanding why some patients are responding to checkpoint inhibitors and others are not. How can we predict efficacy of drugs such as PD-1 in patients
- New emerging targets
- Advances with small molecules for the treatment of cancer
- (Personalised) Cancer vaccines
- Rational combinations and why these are necessary
- Outlook for immunotherapy as a treatment for cancer
Mark Cragg, Ph.D., Professor, Experimental Cancer Research, Antibody & Vaccine Group, Cancer Sciences, University
of Southampton
Mark Cragg is Professor of Experimental Cancer Biology in the Cancer Sciences Unit of Southampton University Faculty of Medicine. He obtained his PhD in 1998 and did his postdoctoral studies in Southampton with Martin Glennie and Melbourne, Australia
with Andreas Strasser before returning to the UK to start his own group in 2007. He is interested in all aspects of how therapeutics result in tumour regression and is focused on three main types of therapeutics – antibodies, chemotherapy and
small molecule inhibitors with the aim of understanding how these therapeutics function to delete tumour cells, how resistance occurs and how it might be overcome. In particular, he is interested in how monoclonal antibodies interact with their targets
to deliver therapeutic activity with consideration for epitope, affinity, downstream signaling and interaction with Fc receptors.
Frederick Arce Vargas, MD, Ph.D., MRCS, Research Associate, UCL Cancer Institute
Dr. Arce Vargas obtained his medical degree from the Universidad de Costa Rica and then completed post-graduate training as a surgical oncologist in San Jose, Costa Rica. Following his interest in cancer research, he then moved to London to do a PhD in
Immunology and Molecular Pathology with Prof. Mary Collins in University College London, where he worked on genetic modification of dendritic cells for tumour immunotherapy. After completing his PhD, he moved to the Cancer Immunotherapy group leaded
by Sergio Quezada and Karl Peggs in the UCL Cancer Institute, where he has been working since 2011. His work has focused on the study of the mechanism of action and engineering of antibodies targeting immune checkpoints for tumour immunotherapy. With
Drs. Quezada and Peggs, he has shown that the mechanism of action of immune modulatory antibodies goes beyond the blocking or engaging of co-inhibitory and co-stimulatory receptors, involving a more complex interaction with Fc gamma receptors and
other cellular networks in the tumor microenvironment.