MEET THE SPEAKERS

ALLISON INSTITUTE
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTER

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Jim Allison, the 2018 Nobel Laureate for Physiology or Medicine, has spent a distinguished career studying the regulation of T cell responses and pioneering new strategies for cancer immunotherapy. Among his most notable discoveries are the determination of the T cell receptor structure and that CD28 is the major costimulatory molecule that allows full activation of naïve T cells and prevents anergy in T cell clones. His lab resolved a major controversy by demonstrating that CTLA-4 inhibits T-cell activation by opposing CD28-mediated costimulation and that blockade of CTLA-4 could enhance T cell responses, leading to tumor rejection in animal models. He proposed that blockade of immune checkpoints such as CTLA-4 might be a powerful strategy for therapy of many cancer types, and conducted preclinical experiments showing its potential. These seminal findings established the field of immune checkpoint blockade therapy for cancer. Work in his lab led to the development of ipilimumab, an antibody to human CTLA-4 and the first immune checkpoint blockade therapy approved by the FDA. Since that time ipilimumab has been approved as part of the therapeutic regimen for metastatic melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, and lung cancer. His current work seeks to improve immune checkpoint blockade therapies currently used by our clinicians and identify new targets to unleash the immune system to eradicate cancer.

He is regental professor and chair of the MD Anderson Immunology department, and the Founding Director of the James P. Allison Institute.

Among many honors, he is a member of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine. His other recent awards include the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2014, Lasker-Debakey Clinical Medical Research award in 2015, the Balzan Prize in 2017, and the Kovalenko Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, the King Faisal Prize in Medicine, and the BBVA Foundations of Knowledge Prize in 2018.

ALLISON INSTITUTE
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTER

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Dr. Sharma is an internationally renowned physician scientist at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she serves as a Professor in Genitourinary Medical Oncology and Immunology, Associate VP of Immunobiology, and holds the T.C. and Jeanette D. Hsu Endowed Chair in Cell Biology. She is the Director for the Immunotherapy Platform at MD Anderson, overseeing immune monitoring studies for over 100 clinical trials. In 2022, she was appointed the Director of Scientific Programs for the James P. Allison Institute.

Her pioneering work includes leading the first neoadjuvant trial with immune checkpoint therapy. She also identified multiple mechanisms of response and resistance to immune checkpoint therapy. Her work also led to the development of multiple innovative
immunotherapy clinical trials, including trials that led to the FDA approval of immune checkpoint agents to treat bladder and renal cell carcinoma. She has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Emil Frei III Award (2016), the Coley Award (2018), and the Randall Prize (2021). Dr. Sharma is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, member of the American Association of Physicians, and fellow of the Academy
of the American Association for Cancer Research.

In addition to her research, Dr. Sharma is a dedicated mentor, having guided over 50 students, fellows, and junior faculty since 2005. Dr. Sharma earned her M.D. and Ph.D. in immunology
from Pennsylvania State University in 1998, completed her residency at Cornell Medical Center in 2000, and her postdoctoral work plus fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center in 2004.

KRUMMEL LAB
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO

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My lab specializes in the discovery of multicellular networks that give the immune system its definition. As a corollary, we are invested in targeting of archetypal collections of immune systems, notably those involving networks of cells built around T cell-myeloid interaction. Our work spans scales from membrane organization, to cell biology, to entire immune systems. My lab focuses on figuring out how immune systems, collections of cells in complex tissues, work. Our cell biology work starts with highly resolved imaging of the immune cells, in order to understand how immune cell interact so efficiently. To do all of our work, we capitalize on combinations of in-house and externally generation innovations in spatial imaging and systems biology, to track information processing by the immune system. In addition, my lab emphasizes the study of how information is exchanged in the dense cellular milieu of organs.

For this and all of our projects, our team drives collaborative science. We founded a microscopy ‘collaboratory’ at UCSF which unites ‘shared’ technical personnel and funding. Together with other UCSF faculty, we also co-founded the ImmunoX initiative, a radical collaboration platform focused on methods and data sharing as a means to accelerate discovery and cures and built a series of linked cores called ‘CoLabs’. This initiative also emphasizes public outreach and interaction as a means to disseminate the value of science.

Our science has led to numerous clinical advances including next-generation ‘Myeloid tuning’ therapies through Pionyr Immunotherapeutics and Foundery Innovations: biotechnology ventures that our lab co-founded. It also includes converting pathway analysis to treatments that includes co-invention of anti-CTLA-4 ‘checkpoint blockade’ drugs (over 100,000 patients treated), as a graduate student. The aim of all of my research is to understand and apply the immune system to improve human health.

In the context of this proposal, I’ve had a long and very fruitful relationship sharing ideas with the co-PI, who has become an active player and thought leader in our strategy to learn pathways that can be sequentially harnessed to progressively move tumors out of their archetypal states, and allow immune-based healing. Papers of relevance to this CRI proposal include.

HUDSON INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH

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Dr Sophia Davidson is an emerging leader in immunology whose research spans genetics, inflammation, and neurodevelopment. Her work focuses on how genetic variants that disrupt cellular homeostasis activate inflammatory pathways, leading to the identification of novel therapeutic targets for rare autoinflammatory diseases. She recently opened her independant laboratory at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, where she investigates how dysregulated RNA and innate immune signalling drive neurological and inflammatory disease. Her team combines human genetics, iPSC models, and advanced imaging to define disease mechanisms and translate these insights into new therapeutic strategies.

HUDSON INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH

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Professor Samuel Forster is a CSL Centenary Fellow and leads the Microbiota and Systems Biology Team at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research. His research integrates genomic, phenotypic, and computational approaches to build a fundamental understanding of the human microbiome and to enable the development of novel microbiome based medicines. Professor Forster is also a co founder of BiomeBank and the Australian Microbiome Culture Collection.

MONASH UNIVERSITY

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Dr Rimma Goldberg graduated from the University of Melbourne and completed Gastroenterology Training at St Vincent’s Hospital and Monash Health.

Following the completion of her training, Dr Goldberg undertook an Inflammatory Bowel Disease Fellowship at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust and a PhD at King’s College London. She has had extensive training in managing complex inflammatory bowel disease and functional gut disorders. During her PhD, Dr Goldberg worked on developing a novel cell based therapy for Crohn’s Disease, which is currently being investigated in a clinical trial. This work has been presented at several national and international conferences, as well as winning multiple grants and awards. Dr Goldberg has published widely in peer reviewed journals.

Dr Goldberg holds a consultant appointment at Monash Health. She is also a senior lecturer at Monash University, Department of Medicine, where she is head of the Cell Based and Regenerative Therapies group.

MONASH BIOMEDICINE DISCOVERY INSTITUTE

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Professor Kim Good-Jacobson Heads the B cells, Antibody, Memory laboratory within the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and is a NHMRC Investigator Fellow. Her research studies the ability of the immune system to clear pathogens and form immunity through production of B cell memory and antibody, exemplified by her recent work published in Nature Immunology and Immunity. Her laboratory uses state-of-the-art epigenomic & single-cell capabilities, pre-clinical models and new tools to track rare memory cells to understand how immunity is formed, and to identify how this process goes awry in chronic viral disease or in autoimmunity.

Prof Good-Jacobson completed her PhD at the Centenary and Garvan Institutes in 2007. She was awarded an Arthritis Australia Fellowship and a CJ Martin Fellowship from the NHMRC to undertake postdoctoral training at Yale University. She established her lab at Monash and has since made key insights into the unique epigenetic regulators that drive effective antibody production and formation of immunity. Prof Good-Jacobson’s contribution to research has previously been recognised by a Bellberry-Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellowship, a GSK Fast Track Challenge partnership and a Victorian Young Tall Poppy Science Award.

PETER MACCALLUM CANCER CENTRE

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Professor Loi is a Medical Oncologist specialized in breast cancer treatment as well as a clinician scientist (group leader) with expertise in genomics, immunology and drug development at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia. She is recognised internationally as a leading clinician scientist whose work has led to new insights into the breast cancer immunology field as well as leading international clinical trials in breast cancer immunotherapy.

To date, she has published over 390 peer-reviewed research articles with a lifetime H-index of >113 (Scopus). Her recent work has been highly influential: she has been ranked in the top 1% of highly cited researchers globally by the Web of Science since 2018. She Co-Chairs the International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG) based in Bern, Switzerland, one of the largest global academic breast cancer trial cooperative groups. She is a current holder of the Inaugural National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) of Australia Endowed Chair and in 2021 received one the Prime Ministers’ Awards for Science.

UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

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Dr Di Yu is the Chair in Paediatric Immunotherapy and inaugural Director of the Ian Frazer Centre of Children's Immunotherapy Research at the University of Queensland. As a Professor of Immunology, he heads the Systems and Translational T-cell Immunology Laboratory. He was educated at Wuhan University (BSc) and the Australian National University (PhD), followed by postdoctoral training at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Before joining UQ, he held faculty positions at Monash University and ANU. His research focuses on investigating T cell subsets, innovating "systems immunology" techniques to assess immune status, and developing novel therapies to regulate T cell functions in autoimmune diseases and cancer.

He has authored over 140 publications in premier journals. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the recipient of the 2023 Jacques Miller Medal from the Australian Academy of Science. He also serves as the Vice President of the Federation of Immunological Societies of Asia-Oceania (FIMSA).