At the 2026 AACR Annual Meeting, the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) honored Kenneth M. Murphy, MD, PhD, with the AACR–CRI Lloyd J. Old Award in Cancer Immunology. The award recognizes scientists whose work has fundamentally advanced the field, and in Dr. Murphy’s case, that impact is hard to overstate. His decades of research defining dendritic cells (DCs) and their role in orchestrating immune responses have helped shape modern cancer immunology.
This year, CRI introduced a new format to bring those ideas to life: a fireside-style conversation between Dr. Murphy and last year’s award recipient, Crystal Mackall, MD. The discussion offered a candid, wide-ranging look at how scientific discovery actually happens, and where the field may be headed next.
Watch the full discussion below:
One theme emerged immediately: the nonlinear nature of scientific progress. Dr. Murphy described his career not as a series of planned breakthroughs, but as a sequence of incremental steps, often guided by curiosity rather than a defined endpoint.
“We’re still asking the same question that we started off with,” he said, reflecting on decades of work probing how the immune system directs different types of responses.
That mindset: following biology rather than forcing a hypothesis, has been central to some of the field’s most important advances. In his award lecture, Dr. Murphy traced how foundational discoveries about DCs laid the groundwork for today’s immunotherapies. His identification of the cDC1 subset as uniquely capable of priming CD8+ T cells, for example, has reshaped the accepted understanding of anti-tumor immunity and revealed why even successful treatments like immune checkpoint inhibitors depend on proper DC function.
The conversation with Dr. Mackall reinforced just how much remains to be understood. Despite major advances, Dr. Murphy emphasized that key questions in immune biology remain unresolved, particularly regarding how immune responses are initiated and sustained. One area he highlighted to this end is the transition between stem-like T cells and short-lived effector cells, a process that may ultimately determine the durability of anti-tumor responses.
That same complexity extends to cancer vaccines, an area that both speakers acknowledged has seen cycles of optimism and disappointment. Dr. Murphy pointed out that the success of these approaches may hinge less on the antigen itself and more on which cells present it. Not all dendritic cells are equal: cDC1-driven priming leads to stronger, more durable CD8+ T cell responses, while other subsets may be less effective. New findings from his lab further suggest that in mRNA and cDNA vaccine platforms, DCs are essential for activating these responses.
At the same time, the discussion broadened beyond immunology to consider the evolving landscape of science itself. From funding pressures to the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI), both Drs. Murphy and Mackall reflected on how the research environment is changing and what that means for the next generation. Dr. Murphy described AI as a useful tool, particularly for managing and analyzing large datasets, but not a substitute for the core of scientific discovery: identifying the right question and interpreting results with insight and context.
Dr. Mackall underscored a related challenge: the sheer volume of information now available can make it harder, not easier, for young scientists to find those critical questions. In that environment, mentorship and the ability to synthesize knowledge into understanding become even more important.
If there was a unifying message across the conversation and Dr. Murphy’s lecture, it was this: breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy are deeply rooted in basic science. The advances transforming patient care today, from checkpoint blockade to next-generation vaccines, are built on decades of foundational discoveries about how the immune system works.
As Dr. Murphy’s work continues to show, there is still much to learn. But if history is any guide, the next wave of progress will come not from rigid plans, but from following biology — one question at a time.
