SPEAKER 1

• Jinfang Zhang, Ph.D.

Instructor
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Harvard Medical School

Title: Molecular mechanisms for CDK4 inhibition synergizing with PD-1 blockade

Highlighted publication:

Zhang J *, Bu X *, Wang H *, Zhu Y, Geng Y, Nihira NT, Tan Y, Ci Y, Wu F, Dai X, Guo J, Huang YH, Fan C, Ren S, Sun Y, Freeman GJ #, Sicinski P #, Wei W #. Cyclin D-CDK4 kinase destabilizes PD-L1 via Cul3^SPOP to control cancer immune surveillance. Nature (2018) 553(7686): 91-95.
(* Co-first author; # Co-corresponding author)

Biosketch:

Dr. Jinfang Zhang earned his Ph.D. degree at Peking University in China. From 2013 to 2015, he received the postdoctoral research training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. In 2015, he was promoted to the instructor at Harvard Medical School/Harvard Dental School. In August of 2017, he received the NIH/NCI K99/R00 pathway to independence award. In May of 2018, he received the Yongjin Distinguished Research Award from Chinese Scientist and Scholars Association at Harvard Medical School. Currently, his research interest is exploring and developing novel effective antitumor strategies including conventional chemotherapy and emerging cancer immunotherapy.

SPEAKER 2

• Wanqiang Sheng, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Division of Newborn Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School

Title: Characterization of LSD1 as a target for cancer immunotherapy

Highlighted publication:

Sheng, W *, LaFleur, MW *, Nguyen, TH, Chen, S, Chakravarthy, A, Conway, JR, Li, Y, Chen, H, Yang, H, Hsu, PH, Van Allen, EM, Freeman, GJ, De Carvalho, DD, He, HH, Sharpe, AH #, and Shi, Y #. LSD1 ablation stimulates anti-tumor immunity and enables checkpoint blockade. Cell (2018)174: 549-563.
(* Co-first author; # Co-corresponding author)

Biosketch:

Dr. Wanqiang Sheng completed his Ph.D. training in immunology at National University of Singapore. He joined Dr. Yang Shi’s lab at Boston Children’s Hospital as a postdoctoral fellow since 2015. Dr. Sheng’s research has been focusing on understanding the epigenetic alterations in both tumor and immune cells that contribute to immune escape and tumor resistance to immunotherapy. His recent work has revealed lysine demethylase LSD1 as a potent inhibitor of antitumor immunity and responsiveness to immunotherapy.

SPEAKER 3

• Benny (Yi) Yang, Ph.D.

CSO
Beijing Biocytogen LLC.

Title: The Bottleneck & in vivo Solutions for Cancer Immunotherapy

Highlighted publication:

Yang Y, Torchinsky MB, Gobert M, Xiong H, Xu M, Linehan JL, Alonzo F, Ng C, Chen A, Lin X, Sczesnak A, Liao JJ, Torres VJ, Jenkins MK, Lafaille JJ, Littman DR. Focused Specificity of Intestinal Th17 Cells towards Segmented Filamentous Bacterial Antigens. Nature (2014) 510: 152-156.

Biosketch:

Dr. Yang graduated from Fudan University with Master’s degree in Microbiology. He received his Ph.D. degree in Immunology from University of Connecticut Health Center and completed his postdoctoral training in New York University School of Medicine. From 2014 to 2016, Dr. Yang worked as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in Medical University of South Carolina and was awarded a U01 grant from NIH. In 2016, he joined Biocytogen as the Director of Antibody Discovery and Development.

MODERATOR

• Shengqing Stan Gu, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Highlighted publication:

Jiang P *, Gu S *, Pan D *, Fu J, Li Z, Traugh N, Bu X, Li B, Liu J, Freeman G, Brown M, Wucherpfennig KW #, Liu XS #. Signatures of T-cell dysfunction and exclusion predict cancer immunotherapy response. Nat Med (2018) e-pub online on Aug 20
(* Co-first author; # Co-corresponding author)

Biosketch:

Stan received his PhD from University of Toronto, where he performed research across two areas under the supervision of Dr. Benjamin Neel: (1) protein tyrosine phosphatase signaling, and (2) computational modeling of cancer clinical course. Stan is currently a postdoctoral fellow co-supervised by Drs. Shirley Liu and Myles Brown. His research combines computational and experimental approaches to interrogate the interaction between cancer cells and the immune system, including (1) identifying new biomarkers for cancer immunotherapy response; (2) elucidating the epigenetic regulation of key components in cancer-T cell interaction; (3) characterizing the immune repertoire in cancer patients and healthy donors.