Carl H. June, MD, gives the keynote address
A keynote address by Carl H. June, MD—whose research has led to a therapy that can keep a leukemia patient cancer-free for years after a single infusion—contributed to a sense of excitement and immediacy at the sixth annual SinaInnovations conference. Cancer was the theme of the event held on Tuesday, October 17, and Wednesday, October 18, in Stern Auditorium at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
A few months before the conference, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a groundbreaking therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia based on CAR-T research by Dr. June, Professor of Immunotherapy, and Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania. And a second CAR-T therapy, for large B-cell lymphoma, was approved on the second day of the conference. In these treatments, a patient’s own T cells are genetically engineered so they produce a protein called a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that allows them to recognize and attack cancer cells. The underlying concepts date to the early 1990s, Dr. June said, but the treatments can now be produced faster and at a larger scale, helping make this a time of revolution in cancer therapeutics.
When CAR-T therapy is combined with other precision medicine, “we are really changing the ability to actually cure metastatic cancer for the first time,” Dr. June said, although the complexity of solid tumors still presents a major challenge.
Dr. June was among many internationally known physicians and researchers featured at SinaInnovations in panels and presentations on immunology, viruses, genetics, genomics, and precision medicine. The conference was opened by Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and, Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System, who said, “Cancer kills our patients, and we need to kill cancer. We need a road map to do that. I can assure you that Mount Sinai has made a significant commitment to be at the forefront of that mission.”
Scott L. Friedman, MD, leader of SinaInnovations, with a panel on disparities in cancer care and survivorship.
At the conference, Maura Gillison, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, also outlined her influential research, which was the first to delineate the role of human papillomavirus (HPV) as a cause of head and neck cancer in men and cervical cancer in women, resulting in a profound shift in preventive treatment—and a decrease in those cancers.
José Baselga, MD, PhD, Physician-in-Chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, delivered an address on novel therapeutics in cancer. Among other advances, Dr. Baselga said, genomic sequencing of tumors makes therapies available to patients more quickly and with more precision. “The FDA is telling us they are not going to require randomized trials for rare disorders in which you have clear clinical benefit with the targeted therapy,” he said. In such cases, Dr. Baselga said, “there is no need—and actually it could be unethical—to do randomized clinical trials.”
Ramon Parsons, MD, PhD, Ward-Coleman Chair in Cancer Research, and Director, The Tisch Cancer Institute, led a panel on personalized medicine that pointed the way forward on many fronts: using mathematical algorithms to model the effects of treatments, using noninvasive “liquid biopsies” to detect and monitor cancer, and creating shareable databases on tumors.
“We are privileged to live in an era of astounding progress in genomic diagnostics, as clinical research matches specific cancers to appropriate treatments,” Dr. Parsons said. A separate panel called for pragmatic, population-level approaches to fighting cancer, such as further decreasing the rate of smoking, and addressing life-threatening disparities in access to health care.
In closing remarks, the leader of SinaInnovations, Scott L. Friedman, MD, Dean for Therapeutic Discovery and Chief of the Division of Liver Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, compared the state of cancer research to a glass half-full. “There are enormous opportunities, but equally enormous challenges, in public health, in finding more effective therapies, and in the financial and regulatory domains,” Dr. Friedman said. “Yet, I think this era—even this year—will be viewed in retrospect as a major inflection point toward a new world of unique therapies that will change patients’ lives.”
Corporate sponsors for SinaInnovations included Accenture PLC; Cisco Systems; Epic; Gilead Sciences, Inc.; Hitachi Consulting; IBM; Jones Day; The Kinetix Group; Pfizer; the Louis and Rachel Rudin Foundation Inc.; and Sema4. Hackathon sponsors included Persistent Systems, Inc., and the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance.