12/6/2022: Dr. Ryan Augustin’s commentary “Old dog, new trick: a tumor-intrinsic role for PD1 in chemoresistant tumor subclones” is published on CCR. Congratulations Ryan!
11/14/2022: The Spatial Omics and Computational Imaging Symposium in Human Diseases Symposium (SPCIG), sponsored by UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, will be held in The Assembly Building, Pittsburgh, PA. We welcome a stellar lines of speakers from UPitt, CMU, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, and Nature Methods Editorial Board. The SPCIG symposium is organized by Dr. Riyue Bao, Dr. Tullia C Bruno, and Dr. Yufei Huang. Please join us!
11/7/2022 - 11/12/2022: The SITC Annual Conference is happening in Boston, MA! Dr. Augustin, Dr. Dadey, and our medical students Zane Nathaniel (Y4) and Arjun Mittal (Y2) will be presenting their work (4 posters + 1 oral presentation!) in Immuno-Oncology and Cancer Immunotherapy. Our lab manager and project coordinator, Sarah Brodeur, will be with us too. Looking forward to seeing everybody at SITC!
11/7/2022: Dr. Rose Doerfler joins our lab. Welcome Dr. Doerfler!
11/2/2022: Dr. Krishna Singh joins our lab. Welcome Dr. Singh!
10/9/2022: We submitted a pilot grant on deep learning and early diagnosis of cancer. Fingers crossed!
10/7/2022: We look forward to Dr. Becky Dadey to present her story on p38 and immune exclusion at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center retreat poster session!!
9/19/2022: Dr. Bao joins the two-day NCI Computational Immuno-Oncology Workshop to discuss challenges, solutions, and future directions in data integration, team science, and therapeutic development in IO.
9/7/2022: We look forward to Arjun Mittal to present his story on CTLA4 tomorrow at Center for System Immunology (CSI) retreat poster session!!
8/20/2022: We received NOA that our R01 in “Immune Exclusion in Cancer Immunotherapy” gets funded by NIDCR!! Congrats to the team :)
8/8/2022: Dr. Becky Dadey submitted her F32 grant. We are rooting for you Becky!!
7/22/2022: Our R01 received a score of 21 (5%)!!!! We are cautiously hopeful :)
7/8/2022: Dr. Bao teaches MSTP year 1 students on using bioinformatics to make new discoveries in biomedicine at UPitt School of Medicine. Thanks Dr. Richard Steinman for the kind invite!
7/5/2022: We resubmitted our R21! Thanks to the team work in lab and fingers crossed.
5/9/2022: Congratulations to our very own Dr. Jason Luke on being elected to #SITC At-Large Director and Board of Directors!
3/12/2022: The 2nd annual #SITC Computational Immuno-Oncology Webinar Series goes live!! Sponsored by NCI Moonshot Program and organized by Big Data and Data Sharing Committee (https://bit.ly/3ihrSOL). Read more and register (it’s free!): https://www.sitcancer.org/education/computational
3/10/2022: Dr. Luke gives plenary lecture at Melanoma Research Alliance Annual Retreat on “Integrating clinical and genomic observations to advance combination therapies in melanoma”, Washington, D.C.
3/5/2022: We resubmitted our R01! Fingers crossed.
2/15/2022: Dr. Bao and Dr. Luke give UPitt DOM #BenchToBedside #Medicine grand rounds, entitled “Analyzing the T cell-inflamed tumor microenvironment to nominate novel cancer immunotherapy strategies”. Watch the talk recording here: https://dom.pitt.edu/grandrounds
2/9/2022: Congrats to Dr. Ryan Augustin on this fielding leading translational review/perspective in IO - “Next steps for clinical translation of adenosine pathway inhibition in cancer”, published on Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer. Read more: https://jitc.bmj.com/content/10/2/e004089
12/10/2021: Congrats to Dr. Luke and team on FDA approval of pembrolizumab for patients with stage IIB/C #Melanoma KEYNOTE-716. Patients with stage IIb and IIc melanomas have a high level of risk for the disease coming back after surgery. This is a very important clinical trial as it shows that pembrolizumab reduces that risk. Based on these results. The trial shifted the paradigm of melanoma treatment by offering patients in this situation the opportunity to get this treatment after surgery.
12/3/2021: Dr. Bao gives lecture on “Integration of Online Cancer Omics Databases and Tools for Translational Research” as invited speaker for UPitt Cancer Biology and Therapeutics Course Fall 2021.
12/1/2021: Congrats to Dr. Afsaneh Amouzegar matching for fellowship @MDAndersonNews! Looking forward to great things continuing for you into the future!
12/1/2021: Congrats to Dr. Tuck Stapor matching for Hem/Onc fellowship @FoxChaseCancer! You're a great doc & will enjoy seeing your success as you proceed on-ward!
11/29/2021: Dr. Bao gives a talk on the impact of #Bioinformatics, #Spatial imaging data, and #MachineLearning at UPitt Hematology/Oncology Faculty meeting.
11/1/2021: We welcome Sarah Brodeur joins our lab!
10/24/2021: Congrats to Dr. Aofei Li #Pathology being selected for dermatopathology fellowship @IUMedSchool! Congrats on all your hard work & excellence driving forward your project on genomics of immune-exclusion in Merkel Cell Carcinoma!
10/20/2021: Congrats to Dr. Wesley Cai on his PhD work at Yale University, published on Nature! Wes and his collragues discovered and targeted a novel epigenetic suppressor of #retroelements to overcome resistance to cancer immunotherapy.
10/18/2021: Dr. Bao gives a talk on “From high-dimensional omics to cancer immunotherapy clinical trials: a translational data science model” at Computational Oncology: Applying Data Science and Artificial Intelligence to Cancer Prevention and Outcomes Panel, AACI/CCAF Association of American Cancer Institutes Annual Meeting.
10/16/2021: Congrats to Dr. Lilit Karapetyan being selected for the FDA/ASCO Fellows Day Workshop!
10/14/2021: Congrats to Dr. Max J Lee on important considerations for #immunotherapy combination treatment and drug development in #melanoma @ClinicalCancerResearch. Low dose ipi backbone much more tolerable & retains activity.
10/5/2021: Congrats to Dr. Max J Lee being selected for the @AACR-@AstraZeneca Clinical Immuno-oncology Research Fellowship!
9/29/2021: Great representations from our lab at Dean's Summer Research Program Symposium #DSRP! Congrats to our Y1 med students Wesley Cai, Alex Tompkins, Nikita Patel, & Joe Mocharnuk on leading excellent projects!
9/8/2021: Congrats to Dr. Ryan Augustin on Editorial - pt centric approach to #immunotherapy in pts w limited PS and adv cancer. IO may have less tox vs chemo but w poor efficacy, we may miss op to engage pts in what is most meaningful #Palliativecare!
9/1/2021: We are excited to welcome Dr. Becky Dadey, our postdoc investigator to join our lab #bioinformatics #immunology #singlecell!
8/26/2021: Dr. Bao co-moderates #medicine #datascience #rstats sessions at R/Medicine Conference 2021.
8/24/2021: Dr. Luke gives talk on Deep Dive on the Adenosine Pathway in #Cancer #Immunotherapy! @sitcancer https://t.co/WW9KqvJTPR?amp=1
7/25/2021: We welcome Arjun Mittal, 1st year medical student to join our lab!
4/7/2021: The #TIIL family keeps getting bigger!~ Dr. Tyler Buchanan joins us during his research block. Welcome Tyler!
4/6/2021: Dr. Bao gives a talk on using genomics and imaging data to detect mechanisms of resistance to cancer immunotherapy, Advancing Research through Computing symposium 2021 (hosted by Pitt Center for Research Computing). ARC is hosted every two years and provides a forum for nationally prominent keynote speakers from UC Berkeley and Argonne National Laboratory, as well as speakers from the University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University to present their work.
3/30/2021: Dr. Luke moderates SITC’s CME-, CNE-, CPE- and MOC-certified Advances in Cancer Immunotherapy Webinar: Clinical Updates from SITC 2020. webinar: http://ow.ly/6u3L50E8v72
3/22/2021: Dr. Raj Shankarappa joins the lab. Welcome Raj!
3/16/2021: Dr. Daniel Stapor will present at DOM Grand Rounds, part of the Resident Research Series. Good luck, Tuck!
3/13/2021: Dr. Jason Luke gives melanoma immunotherapy patient/family education lecture with melanoma prgram leaders, UPMC Hillman Cancer Center.
3/12/2021: Our abstract #immunogenomics #neuroblastoma was accepted as oral+poster by IMMUNOLOGY2021, the annual conference of The American Association of Immunologists (AAI)!! We will be presenting at the Block Symposium session "Novel Technologies to Interrogate Anti-Tumor Immunity and Therapy Response", May 12, 2021.
3/12/2021: Dr. Bao gives talk on “Leveraging high-dimensional omics data to decipher resistance to cancer immunotherapy”, Session “Therapeutic Resistance/Therapeutic Development”, Cancer Biology Program 2021 Annual Retreat.
3/11/2021: Dr. Bao gives NGS workshop as part of the UPitt Center for Research Computing Spring 2021 series.
3/4/2021: Dr. Jason Luke co-leads SITContheHill efforts together with Dr. George Weiner, Dr. Igor Puzanov, and Dr. Christian Capitini, Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer.
2/24/2021: Dr. Bao co-moderates AI, Imaging, and Diagnosis roundtable discussion with Dr. Yvonne M Saenge (Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbia University), Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA) Annual Retreat. Great discussions on the imaging technologies, data analysis, and real-time AI-driven diagnosis of melanoma!
2/20/2021: Dr. Luke discusses adjuvant therapy options with many experts in the field, the 15th Annual Canadian Melanoma Conference.
2/15/2021: Joshua Holloway, research technician joins the lab. Welcome Josh!
2/9/2021: Dr. Bao joins panel discussion on mutation signatures, WPA Environmental Risk Factors for Lung Cancer Brainstorming Mini-Workshop on Mutational Signatures of Exposures.
2/8/2021: Dr. Luke gives a webinar to explain the “When, Why and Who of BRAF Testing for Melanoma” as a part of the @Novartis Know Now webinar series. Learn more here: https://buff.ly/3rA8YFy.
2/6/2021: Our lab’s study “Transcriptional analysis of metastatic uveal melanoma survival nominates NRP1 as a therapeutic target” is published on Melanoma Research. Congrats to Drs. Bao, Luke, and co-authors!
2/4/2021: Our HCC Microbiome Pilot grant got funded. Congrats to the lab!
2/3/2021: Dr. Max Jameson Lee’s QUAD trial is open at UPMC.
2/1/2021: Wesley Cai, PhD, Y1 medical student joins the lab. Welcome Wes!
1/29/2021: Drs. Jason Luke and Riyue Bao give talks on Y1 fellow’s research day, University of Pittsburgh.
1/7/2021: Dr. Max Jameson Lee’s QUAD trial is approved by UPitt IRB.
12/5/2020: Dr. Bao gives talks on molecular correlates and therapeutic targets in cancer immunotherapy at Northwestern University, Chicago, IL.
12/02/2020: Our lab’s study “Molecular correlates and therapeutic targets in T cell-inflamed versus non-T cell-inflamed tumors across cancer types” is published on Genome Medicine. Congrats to Drs. Bao, Stapor, and Luke!
11/21/2020: Dr. Jason Luke gives talk on “STING Agonist Development Landscape and Perspectives”, ESMO Asia Virtual Congress 2020 - Joint SITC-ESMO Immunotherapy Primer 2, Hong Kong, China (virtual).
11/14/2020: Dr. Jason Luke chairs session on “Next Generation Immunotherapy Combinations: Navigating FDA, Clinical Trial Design, Diagnostics and Novel Biomarkers”, 35th Anniversary Annual Meeting SITC 2020.
10/4/2020 and 10/6/2020: Dr. Bao gives workshops on Cancer Variant Calling and annotation, UPitt CRC fall NGS workshop series.
8/29/2020: Dr. Bao gives talks on nDSPA (R software for spatial profiling analysis from DSP data, GitHub), R/Medicine 2nd Annual Conference.
7/31/2020: Dr. Max Jameson Lee is accepted by ASCO/AACR Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop. Congratulations Max!
6/1/2020: Our lab’s study “ACE2 and TMPRSS2 expression by clinical, HLA, immune, and microbial correlates across 34 human cancers and matched normal tissues: implications for SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19” is accepted by Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer. Congrats to Drs. Bao, Luke and co-authors!
5/29/2020: Dr. Jason Luke gives 2 talks on “A Phase 1, First-in-Human, Open-Label, Dose Escalation Study of MGD013, a Bispecific DART® Molecule Binding PD‑1 and LAG‑3 in Patients with Unresectable or Metastatic Neoplasms”, and “PD-1 Treatment Outcomes Informed by Gene Expression Profiles”, 2020 ASCO Virtual Annual Meeting.
5/15/2020: Shaila Fye, Barnard College (NY) joins the bioinformatics summer internship program. Welcome Shaila!
5/5/2020: Lancaster Wu, Allegheny College (PA) joins the bioinformatics summer internship program. Welcome Lancaster!
4/25/2020: Dr. Jason Luke gives talk on “Integration of somatic genomics with immune transcriptomics in cancer clinical trials, 2020 AACR Annual Meeting, Virtual Meeting 1.
11/6/2019: Dr. Luke chairs sessions on The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 34th Annual Meeting, National Harbor, MD.
10/18/2019: Dr. Max Jameson Lee joins the lab. Welcome Max!
10/1/2019: TIIL lab officially opens!