And thank you to the Paul Albrechtsen Research Institute @cancercaremb.bsky.social for supporting my attendance through the Dr. Leigh Murphy Manitoba Tumour Bank Travel Award!

Thank you BioCanRx Cancer Stakeholder Alliance for inviting me to participate in this year's Learning Institute! I couldn't think of a better way of celebrating #DaffodilMonth than with my #TeamManitoba Patient Scholars, Sandra and Cynthia 💛🩷💚

...Meghan Kates' award-winning HQP plenary talk on immuno-metabolism, Dr. Livnat Jerby's @stanford.edu groundbreaking synbio technologies, and the plenaries ending on a high note with Dr. Denis Migliorini's novel CAR designs for high-grade gliomas.

My personal favourites from this year's Summit included:
Dr. Katy Rezvani's @mdanderson.bsky.social scientific keynote on their amazing translational discoveries on CAR-NK, Milan Heck's eye-opening patient partner keynote, Shannon Snelling's wonderful patient-grad student partnership program...

This plenary was concluded by Dr. Christian Hinrichs @rutgerscancer.bsky.social who presented their progress in utilizing cell therapies against HPV-related epithelial cancers.

HQP Leanne Palichuk (Lee Lab
@ucalgary.bsky.social) talked about her work on utilizing rare DN T cells to improve the potency of anti-tumour T cells against relapsed pediatric AML.

Then, Dr. Marie Bleakley
@fredhutch.bsky.social featured their innovative work on TCR T cells against minor histocompatibility antigens for patients who relapse post-HSCT.

First, Dr. Doug Mahoney @ucalgary.bsky.social presented on their Canadian clinical trial using GCAR1 CAR T cells, which target GPNMB on sarcomas.

Sandra (my Patient Scholar) and I were tasked to present on Plenary 1: Clinical Testing of Innovative T cell Therapies for Cancer. This thought- (and hope-) provoking plenary highlighted novel T-cell therapies and their progress towards clinical utility.

This year, we had 5 outstanding plenaries on T cell therapies, non-T players of the immune system, immuno-metabolism, spatial immunobiology, and mRNA-based immunotherapies.

Happy holidays, Tamra!

🧬