Saturday, the second day of the six-day American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2024 featured a full slate of diverse events throughout the day. The over 23,000 in-person and virtual registrants had 41 education sessions and 12 methods workshops on a diverse range of topics to choose from. There was also a special session on “Strategies to Effectively Communicate Science to the Public” chaired by AACR President Philip Greenberg. The AACR 2024 Award for Lifetime Achievement was presented to Steven Rosenberg, MD, PhD, Senior Investigator and Chief, Surgery Branch, NCI/CCR. This award was established to honor individuals who have made significant fundamental contributions to cancer research, either through a single scientific discovery or a collective body of work. These contributions, whether in research, leadership, or mentorship, must have had a lasting impact on the cancer field and must have demonstrated a lifetime commitment to progress against cancer.
Dr. Rosenberg has pioneered the development of effective immunotherapies for patients with advanced cancer. His studies of cell transfer immunotherapy using tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) have resulted in durable complete remissions in patients with advanced solid cancers. He has also pioneered the development of gene therapy and was the first to successfully insert foreign genes into humans. His recent studies of the adoptive transfer of genetically modified lymphocytes using chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) or conventional T-cell receptors (TCR) have resulted in the regression of metastatic cancer in patients with lymphomas and solid cancers. His current research is aimed at defining the host immune response of patients to their cancers. These studies emphasize the ability of human lymphocytes to recognize unique cancer antigens and the identification of anti-tumor T-cell receptors that can be exploited to develop new cell transfer immunotherapies. As Chief, Dr. Rosenberg also oversees the Branch’s extensive clinical program aimed at translating scientific advances into effective immunotherapies for patients with advanced cancers arising from the breast, gastrointestinal tract, and pancreas.
In his closing remarks after accepting the award and outlining his work, Dr. Rosenberg thanked many, many collaborators who have helped in his achievements. He also movingly thanked his wife of 55 years.
Plenary Session
The Award ceremony was followed by a plenary session titled “Discovery Science in Early Cancer Biology and Interception” and featured five outstanding speakers, including the moderator Daniel De Carvalho, PhD, Associate Professor, Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, and the following:
Margaret Goodell, PhD, Professor and Chair, Molecular and Cellular Biology; Director, Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, spoke on “Clonal Hematopoiesis Mechanisms and Cancer Risk.”
Kornelia Polyak, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and a co-leader of the Dana-Farber Harvard Cancer Center Cancer Cell Biology Program, spoke on “Drivers of Age-Related Increase in Breast Tumorigenesis.”
Don Cleveland, PhD, Department Chair, Cellular and Molecular Medicine, UC San Diego described “Genomic Origins of Aggressive Cancers from Chromothripsis to ERV-Associated Mis-Segregation.”
Michael Kastan, MD, PhD, Executive Director, Duke Cancer Institute, presented “DNA Damage Responses: Bedside to Bench to Bedside.”
The session ended with a wrap-up and suggestions of future opportunities by Dr. De Carvalho. He looks to a future that will see early detection for multiple tumors and also examine how the dysregulation of transposable elements leads to viral mimicry and thus activation of the innate immune response.
Genomic Repeats and Transposable Elements in Tumor Biology
Earlier in the day, one of the 41 education sessions discussed “Roles for Genomic Repeats and Transposable Elements in Tumor Biology and Implications for Therapy.” The introduction to this session said the following:
“Nearly half of human DNA reflects sequences of RNAs that have been reverse transcribed and integrated into the genome over evolutionary time. These highly repetitive sequences include long and short interspersed elements (LINEs and SINEs) and endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Recently we have come to understand that cancers show epigenetic dysregulation and altered transcription of these elements as compared to normal tissues. This includes the expression of LINE-1 retrotransposons, elements with protein-coding and mutagenic potential, as well as other repeats that can produce tumor antigens or immunostimulatory RNAs.”
“In this session, we will provide a primer on interspersed repeats and transposable elements, describe their epigenetic landscape, and contributions to the transcriptome in malignancies. We will provide an update on studies aimed to leverage LINE-1 biology for novel approaches to cancer diagnosis and treatment. We will consider approaches to develop an integrated perspective on repeat expression and immune responses to cancer.”
Kathleen Burns, MD, PhD, Professor, Harvard Division of Medical Sciences; Chair, Department of Pathology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, was the session chair and she also gave a presentation entitled “The LINE-1 Retrotransposon: A Marker and Mutator in Cancers.”
Ting Wang, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Medicine; Head, Department of Genetics, McDonnell Genome Institute, Washington University School of Medicine, spoke on “Transposable Elements and the Cancer Epigenome.”
Benjamin Greenbaum, PhD, Associate Attending, Computational Oncology Department, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center gave a talk entitled “Defining the Immune Phenotype of Repeats in Cancer.”
by Michael D. O’Neill
