Engaging Impactful Immunotherapy Approaches in Renal Cell Cancer Studies

Summary Dr. Naomi Haas is a genitourinary (GU) medical oncologist at the Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) with expertise in writing and leading cooperative group, industry-led, and investigator-initiated trials (IITs). She is the renal sub-committee chair within ECOG-ACRIN (EA) and co-leader of the Cancer Therapeutics Program at the ACC. She requests support from this R50 award for initiatives at the ACC (developing immunotherapy trials in renal cell cancer [RCC] to bring to the NCTN) and within the NCTN. Participation in translational research has been a motive force for her professional activities since she spent almost 5 years in a basic science laboratory after her fellowship. As co-leader of Cancer Therapeutics, she connects clinicians with translational scientists to leverage novel biomarker signals and immune signals into NCTN IITs. One example is her ongoing work with A. Huang at the ACC in characterizing T cell subsets predictive of T cell exhaustion after immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy. A new collaboration with K. Alexander will understand the role of chromatin condensation manifested by nuclear speckling in assessing prognosis and response to ICI therapy in RCC. Incorporating both these molecular tools, she is working with a young investigator (YI) and a urologist in launching a clinical trial in which patients who achieve deep responses from ICI therapy undergo resection of residual disease (consolidation) with the goal of treatment-free survival as a future NCTN trial. She also works with C. June to build novel chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells for use in RCC. With safety data supporting that their CARs can be developed as multi-institutional trials, she is uniquely positioned to supervise transition of such studies from single- to multi-institutional settings, a key step in their availability to patients. Dr. Haas has two emerging roles within the NCTN: First, her new appointment as the ECOG-ACRIN GU Committee Chair will allow her to define scientific priorities with subcommittee chairs and mentor YIs. Second, from her experiences using biologic specimens and clinical data from many NCTN trials, she has identified obstacles to full sample sets for study patients. Working with the EA Research Advocate Committee to amend processes at participating institutions, she has developed a plan to communicate correlative study goals to patients and study staff. These changes should improve correlative data acquisition and patient retention nationally. Thus, her R50 support will improve ACC and national NCTN participation by building RCC immunotherapy platforms at ACC, by engaging YIs and urologists in future NCTN projects, and by improving the correlative and patient retention process within the NCTN. Project Number: 1R50CA288482-01A1 | Fiscal Year: 2025 | NIH Institute/Center: National Cancer Institute (NCI) | Principal Investigator: Naomi Haas | Institution: UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, PA | Award Amount: $178,893 | Activity Code: R50 | Study Section: Special Emphasis Panel[ZCA1 SRB-5 (M1)] View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11224307