Immunologic Strategies for Leukemia and Lymphoma

On February 20, 2014, Holbrook Kohrt, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Stanford Cancer Institute, discussed current immunologic approaches to treating patients with leukemia or lymphoma, and how close we are to making these treatments available to more patients, as part of the Cancer Research Institute's Breakthroughs in Cancer Immunotherapy Webinar Series.

Holbrook E. Kohrt, MD, PhD, an Assistant Professor at Stanford Cancer Institute, currently investigates novel therapeutic strategies to enhance anti-tumor immunity. Dr. Kohrt attended Stanford University Medical School as the Baxter Foundation Scholar, Howard Hughes Scholar, and American Society of Hematology Research Fellow. During this he developed, validated, and nationally implemented a nomogram for risk prediction in early stage breast cancer. He trained in Internal Medicine at Stanford through the Clinical Investigator Pathway and completed fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at Stanford with a research focus on preclinical models of novel immunomodulatory antibodies. Dr. Kohrt received his PhD in clinical trial design and tumor immunology from Stanford with a thesis including the first report of an agonistic monoclonal antibody capable of enhancing the efficacy of tumor-targeting therapeutics. This antibody is now in phase 1/2 clinical trials, only 3 years since first preclinical research efforts. As faculty at Stanford, Dr. Kohrt is developing novel vaccine strategies which induce tumor antigen specific immunity prior to infusing the donor inoculum and improve graft-versus-tumor reactions without exacerbation of graft-versus-host disease. His studies also include efforts to identify and develop immunomodulatory antibodies targeting immune effector cells subsets, such as natural killer cells, which enhance the anti-tumor activity of tumor-targeting antibodies. Dr. Kohrt’s trials are currently being investigated in the US and three countries internationally.

This webinar is part of the Cancer Research Institute's webinar series, "Cancer Immunotherapy and You," which are offered free to the public and feature informative updates for patients and caregivers from leaders in cancer immunotherapy, followed by a Q&A. For more information on this webinar, or to register for upcoming webinars, please visit www.cancerresearch.org/webinars.