I hope you had a great weekend. Ours started with me in Pittsburgh, where I was a member of the University of Pittsburgh’s Head and Neck Cancer SPORE external advisory committee. It was really interesting, and gave me some interesting insights into how to put together multi-investigator proposals. While there we reminisced about Ron Herberman, the founding Director of their Cancer Center. Ron, a true giant in immunology who pioneered the study of natural killer cells. Ron, who stepped down as Cancer Center Director five years ago, died unexpectedly last week. He certainly will be missed by all of us who had the privilege of knowing him.
I was planning to fly home on Friday night so we could drive up to Philly to visit our kids. But, with bad weather looming, I switched to a Southwest flight to Baltimore, and met Harriet there. We spent the night at our daughter’s house, visiting with her, our son-in-law Ben and Isaac. We then all caravaned up to Ken and Sarah’s house, and had a family dinner there. Ella is doing very well, and so is Sarah, though I can’t figure out how she can juggle medical school with being a new mother. I get tired just thinking about it.
The preceding two weeks have been quite busy. The annual ASCO meetings were very busy, and exciting for those of us (here I refer primarily to Mike Atkins) who have devoted our careers to immunotherapy. Most notably, Jed Wolchok from Memorial Sloan Kettering presented astonishing results showing that combined therapy with antibodies inhibiting CTLA4 and PD-1 cause major anti-tumor clinical responses in patients with advanced melanoma. There is no doubt that we are firmly in a new era where manipulation of immune responses will be an essential component of effective anti-cancer therapy. And, we will not only be a part of it, but will be helping to lead the way. I know that Ron Herberman would have loved to be a part of this ongoing sea change, but his work helped to make this new world possible.
On the CCSG front, I am now working on my site visit presentations. They are not easy to do well, but I think I am making progress. More to follow on that as we draw closer to October 3.
Have a great week.