Introduction

The ability to enhance immune responses to target cancer has revolutionised oncology, offering transformative clinical outcomes. However, a significant proportion of cancers remain unresponsive to immunotherapy, underscoring the need for strategies that deliver stronger immune activation. The challenge is that enhanced immunity to cancer is coupled to immune-related toxicities, mediated by T cells attack on normal tissues due to failure of immune regulation. 

Addressing this challenge requires a systems-level understanding of how T cells discriminate between self and non-self-antigens, and strategies to harness this knowledge to generate T cells specific for cancer. 

This brand new EACR virtual conference will bring together leading basic and translational scientists to explore the mechanisms of T cell antigen selectivity across multiple scales. By integrating insights from immunology, computational biology, and clinical research, the meeting aims to advance strategies for enhancing the cancer immunotherapeutic window by enhancing T cell specificity. 

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Target audience:

This conference will bring together basic, computational, translational, and clinical scientists interested in understanding and engineering T cell specificity. It will be particularly relevant to researchers in immunology, cancer biology, cell therapy, systems biology, and machine learning, spanning early-career investigators through to established leaders in the field. 

Topics to be covered: 

• T cell receptor specificity 
• T cell engineering 
• T cell control of cancer 

Scientific Programme Committee:

• Benny Chain (Co-Chair), The UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation, UK
• Omer Dushek (Co-Chair), University of Oxford, UK
• Armita Nourmohammad, Yale School of Medicine, USA
• Melita Irving, University of Lausanne, Switzerland 

Lay summary of the conference topic:

T cells are a type of immune cell that can recognise and destroy cancer cells. New cancer treatments that harness T cells have transformed outcomes for some patients, but they can also cause serious side effects when T cells mistakenly attack healthy tissues. This conference will explore how T cells distinguish harmful targets, such as cancer, from the body’s normal cells. Researchers from immunology, computational biology, and clinical medicine will discuss new ways to better predict and control T cell behaviour. By improving the precision of T cell responses, this research could help develop safer and more effective cancer immunotherapies with fewer autoimmune side effects for patients. 

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