Progress of Immunotherapy in Childhood Cancers

On December 14, 2016, Alex Huang, M.D., Ph.D., discussed current immunotherapy treatment options for children with cancer, and the latest breakthroughs that are paving the way for immunotherapy to help these children even more.

Dr. Huang is the Clinical Fellowship Director at Case Western Reserve University’s Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital. His work, which has mostly dealt with cancers affecting children, has sought to improve our ability to monitor immune and cancer activity in patients, as well as provide doctors with tools to help them better understand how tumors develops and how their interactions with the immune system determine the course of the disease. Specifically, he’s exploring how the tumor environment influences immune cell recruitment and behavior, and the role that chronic inflammation plays in the development of cancer in the gastrointestinal tract. With an improved understanding of the interplay between cancer and the immune system, Dr. Huang hopes that better approaches can be developed for detecting as well as treating cancer in children, and ultimately that these strategies will prove more effective than our current efforts and result in improvements in patient survival.

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. This series is presented by Genentech and LabAnswer and its employees, with generous support from Abbvie, Celldex Therapeutics, NewLink Genetics, and Regeneron. For more information on this webinar, or to register for upcoming webinars, please visit www.cancerresearch.org/webinars.