Drew Pardoll, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, will be presenting the keynote on Friday, October 20 at the 2017 symposium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His topic will be "Harnessing the Patient’s Immune System Against Their Tumor: The Revolution in Cancer Therapy." He observed that the application of 40 years of basic immunology and cancer immunology is now paying off in the establishment of immunotherapy as a new pillar of cancer treatment.

Dr. Pardoll is the Abeloff Professor of Oncology, Medicine, Pathology and Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine and the Director of the Bloomberg-Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and Co-Director of the Cancer Immunology Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. With undergraduate and graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins, has published over 300 papers on vaccines, gene therapies, cancer prevention technologies, recombinant immune modulatory agents for specific pathways that regulate immunity to cancer and infectious diseases and over 20 book chapters on T cell immunology and cancer vaccines. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Cancer Cell, and on scientific advisory boards for the Cancer Research Institute, Biologic Resources Branch of the National Cancer Institute, American Association of Cancer Research and other institutions. With research interests in gene and cell therapy, his work has included the discovery of gamma - delta T cells, NKT cells and interferon-producing killer dendritic cells and identification of gd-T cells, NKT cells and IKDC. He elucidated the role of Stat3 signaling in tumor immune evasion and in Th17 development, leading to the discovery that Stat3-driven Th17 responses promote carcinogenesis. He discovered one of the two ligands for the PD-1 inhibitory receptor and leads the Hopkins cancer immunology program that developed PD-1 pathway-targeted antibodies, demonstrating their clinical activity in multiple cancer types.

The symposium will be held October 19-21 at the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott. Read more about the event.