CRUK RadNet City of London Seminar Series #7

Radiotherapy-induced in situ immunization: Mechanisms and barriers.

18th May 2021 at 3:00-4:00 pm GMT

Hosted by Dr Anthony Kong Reader and Honorary Consultant Clinical Oncologist at King’s College London, we will be exploring the mechanisms and barriers of Radiotherapy-induced situ immunisation with guest speaker, Dr Sandra Demaria from the Weill Cornell Medical College.

A bit about our speaker:

Sandra Demaria, M.D. is currently Professor of Radiation Oncology and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. Dr. Demaria is internationally known for her studies demonstrating the synergy of radiotherapy with immunotherapy in pre-clinical cancer models. She was the first to show that radiotherapy can convert tumors unresponsive to immune checkpoint inhibitors into responsive ones, a finding being translated in several clinical trials at multiple institutions.

Her lab has a central interest in addressing the molecular mechanisms that regulate ionizing radiation’s ability to generate an in situ tumor vaccine in both preclinical models as well as cancer patients. Her group has recently demonstrated the development of neoantigen-specific T cells in lung cancer patients treated with focal radiotherapy and ipilimumab. As a breast cancer pathologist Dr. Demaria also studies the immunological microenvironment of breast cancer in patients, and therapeutic strategies to modulate the immune infiltrate in preclinical models and in patients.

She has authored more than 120 articles and has received awards from the US National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, the Department of Defense CDMRP, and several private Foundations, and serves in the editorial board of Cancer Immunology Research, and the Journal for the ImmunoTherapy of Cancer. She is currently the Chair of the AACR Cancer Immunology Working Group, and has previously served in the board of the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) and the Radiation Research Society (RRS).

To watch a full recording of the seminar with Dr Sandra Demaria, click here.