Roswell Park Researchers Take International Stage at AACR 2022

American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2022 Annual Meeting. New Orleans, Louisiana, April 8-13, 2022

Researchers from 74 countries gathered to share ideas and insights on the latest basic, translational and clinical cancer research for the just-ended American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2022 Annual Meeting. Among them were representatives from more than 30 Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center research teams invited to present new findings during the meeting, which was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, April 8-13.

More than 40 national and international media outlets covered Roswell Park’s research presentations, with the ASCO Post, Cancer Network, HemOnc Today, MedPage Today, Medscape, OncLive, Pharmacy Times, Precision Oncology News and The Pharma Letter among those reporting on results Roswell Park Chief of Thoracic Medicine Grace Dy, MD, presented on behalf of an international research team on the “major advance” seen with the longest follow-up study of cancer patients treated with any KRAS inhibitor.

“The results we’ve seen at two years show a pronounced benefit, with more than 40% of patients on this study experiencing a partial or complete response to sotorasib,” Dr. Dy says of the CodeBreaK 100 study, which assessed the efficacy of the targeted therapy sotorasib (also known as Lumakras) in treatment of patients with a particular genetic subtype of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). “While KRAS mutations are so common in lung cancer, it has been notoriously hard to develop targeted therapy against these mutations. We’re very grateful to have had early access to this first-in-class therapy for our patients at Roswell Park, and eagerly look forward to the results from the randomized phase 3 CodeBreaK 200 trial comparing sotorasib to standard chemotherapy.”

Dr. Dy was also invited to highlight the findings in an AACR press conference during the meeting.

Other highlights from Roswell Park’s AACR 2022 presentations:

• Irwin Gelman, PhD, of the Department of Cancer Genetics and Genomics, shared new findings about the role of the HBP1 protein in controlling breast cancer dormancy reawakening. In his minisymposium talk, Dr. Gelman shared results from a Roswell Park study that used genomic screens to identify genes that specifically control breast cancer dormancy in the bone. “A significant portion of breast cancer cases recur years, sometimes decades after all evidence of the initial disease has been removed by surgery, systemic drug therapy and/or radiation, because cells that metastasize early in the initial breast cancer disseminate to and colonize peripheral sites, including the bone,” says Dr. Gelman. “We are planning a preclinical study to assess how effective two repurposed drugs may be in decreasing breast cancer recurrence and increasing the long-term survival of breast cancer patients.”

• Sarbajit Mukherjee, MD, and Shipra Gandhi, MD, both Assistant Professors of Oncology in the Department of Medicine, reported findings from two studies that are part of a novel immunotherapy platform in development at Roswell Park under the leadership of Pawel Kalinski, MD, PhD, involving modulation of key proteins known as chemokines. Dr. Mukherjee presented initial results of a phase 2 study evaluating a chemokine-modulatory regimen in patients with colorectal cancer metastatic to the liver (abstract CT105/ LB-7312), and Dr. Gandhi presented Systemic rintatolimod and interferon-?2b selectively reprogram local tumor microenvironment in patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer for enhanced influx of cytotoxic T-lymphocytes but not regulatory T-cells (abstract CT145/ LB-7620).

• Benjamin Switzer, DO, a Fellow in the Department of Internal Medicine, reported findings from a phase 2 clinical trial that advances knowledge in another signature area of Roswell Park research — the role of the sympathetic nervous system in cancer and response to cancer treatment. His presentation is ?-2 adrenergic receptor (AR): Another immune checkpoint (IC)" A phase II clinical trial of propranolol (P) with pembrolizumab (Pem) in patients with unresectable stage III and stage IV melanoma (abstract CT568/ LB-7806).

Andrea Anampa-Guzmán, a Research Assistant with the Lymphoma Service within the Department of Medicine, and post-doctoral researcher Aftab Alam, PhD, of the Department of Immunology, received Global Scholar-in-Training Awards — Anampa- Guzmán for Breast cancer care quality in Peru (abstract 3656), and Dr. Alam for KRAS and fungi cooperate to drive IL33 secretion and type 2 immunity in the pancreatic cancer tumor microenvironment

“I’m excited to see cutting-edge new research potentially bringing cures to many cancer patients who previously had dismal clinical outcomes,” Changchuan “Charles” Jiang, MD, a Department of Medicine Fellow who shared the poster abstract “Clinical outcomes in women with metastatic HER2-Low breast cancer in the real world,” says of the opportunity to be part of this exchange.

A complete list of research studies led by Roswell Park teams and presented at the meeting can be found here, with additional notes about our participation shared on Twitter.

Applause to all those invited to share insights and information in such a prestigious venue!