Cancer Immunotherapy: Basic Mechanisms Informing Clinical Applications & Combinations

Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled “Cancer Immunotherapy: Basic Mechanism Informing Clinical Applications & Combinations” organized by Drs. Jennifer Guerriero, Thomas Marron, Ira Mellman and Solange Peters, with scientific programming input from Keystone Symposia. The meeting will take place at the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada from March 15–19, 2026. While cancer immunotherapy strategies are highly effective, they target only a few immunoregulatory pathways and benefit a limited subset of patients. Most patients either fail to respond or respond briefly before developing resistance. This Keystone Symposia meeting aims to better understand the mechanisms behind this resistance and discuss the immunotherapeutic strategies under development that will harness alternative immune pathways to improve clinical responses. Conference sessions will highlight emerging approaches to targeting stromal and myeloid cells, insights into tumor recognition by lymphoid lineages, and the use of advanced technologies like spatial imaging and AI to understand the tumor microenvironment. Specifically, this meeting will convene leading cancer immunotherapy experts to review the successes and failures of existing therapies, explore new therapeutic targets within host immunity, and discuss the challenges and potential of combination therapies. These interdisciplinary perspectives will provide insight into future clinical applications of novel approaches and optimal combination therapies to advance strategies designed to eliminate cancers through innovative therapeutic approaches using the immune response. Project Number: 1R13CA310704-01 | Fiscal Year: 2026 | NIH Institute/Center: National Cancer Institute (NCI) | Principal Investigator: TERRY SHEPPARD | Institution: KEYSTONE SYMPOSIA, SILVERTHORNE, CO | Award Amount: $5,000 | Activity Code: R13 | Study Section: Special Emphasis Panel[ZRG1 SCIL-S (80)] View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11321075