Crystal L Mackall, MD is the Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor of Pediatrics and Internal Medicine at Stanford University. She serves as Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy, Associate Director of Stanford Cancer Institute, Leader of the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Stanford. During a 27 year tenure culminating as Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch, NCI, and now through the Mackall Lab at Stanford (https://med.stanford.edu/mackalllab.html), she has led an internationally recognized translational research program focused on immunooncology. She has conducted numerous early phase and first-in-human and first-in-child clinical trials spanning dendritic cell vaccines, cytokines, and adoptive immunotherapy using NK cells and genetically modified T cells. Her work is credited with identifying an essential role for the thymus in human T cell regeneration and discovering IL-7 as the master regulator of T cell homeostasis. Her group was among the first to demonstrate impressive activity of CD19-CAR in pediatric leukemia, developed a novel CD22-CAR with impressive activity in leukemia refractory to CD19 targeting and identified T cell exhaustion as a major feature limiting the activity of CAR T cells. Recently her group has developed a novel approach to prevent human T cell exhaustion. Dr. Mackall’s clinical trials are notable for incorporation of deep biologic endpoints that further our understanding of the basis for success and failure of novel immunotherapeutics.

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David Miklos, MD, PhD is a physician-scientist who has established a human translational research group that fosters the development of both laboratory immunologists, and clinical translational researchers. Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT) cures blood cancer via beneficial graft-v-tumor immunity. His overall research goal is to augment GVT while preventing detrimental graft versus host disease (GVHD). The Miklos lab pioneered protein microarray technologies to discover clinically relevant allogeneic antibodies, especially those targeting H-Y antigens following sex mismatched transplantation. Their discovery that allogeneic HY antibodies develop in association with chronic GVHD revealed a critical B cell role in chronic GVHD pathogenesis and his clinical trials established cGVHD therapeutic benefits using anti-B cell drugs rituximab and ibrutinib. He developed high-throughput sequencing of the B and T cell immune receptor thereby enabling: 1) lymphoid disease quantification, 2) detailed B and T cell donor reconstitution kinetics, and 3) clonal analysis of antigen specific responses following allo-HCT.

Immunotherapy is revolutionizing cancer treatment Dr Miklos is the Clinical Director of Stanford's Cancer Cell Therapy Program developing and evaluating the most promising chimeric antigen T-cell (CAR-T) therapies. CAR-T genetically modifies the patient's T lymphocytes to target their cancer. Thus far, the most successful CAR-T therapies have targeted B cell antigens CD19, CD20, CD22, and BCMA, and ongoing trials are treating patients with relapsed/refractory leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma.

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