New Paradigm for Battling Cancer

-10^th Avison BioLife Symposium

On August 21, the tenth Avison BioLife Symposium was held at the Avison BioLife Research Center on the Sinchon Campus. Coinciding with the first anniversary of the Yonsei Cancer Center and the 130^th anniversary of Jejoongwon, the theme of this year’s symposium was “Cancer Immunotherapy.” In attendance were nearly 500 medical researchers from Korea and abroad. 

In the morning session, Professor Nagahiro Minato from Kyoto University gave a lecture on the history and development of “checkpoint” treatment, highlighting recent discoveries in clinical trials. Professor Minato is an esteemed scholar in the field, having been a part of the discovery of PD-1 and PD-L1, which form the basis for “immunity checkpoint resistance.”

In the afternoon sessions, there were lectures and discussions on research methodology, particularly concerning individually designed cancer immunity treatments using NGS analysis and CART-T cell therapy. Representatives from the pharmaceutical companies MSD and Celgene also reported on recent clinical research and cancer immunity treatments currently in development. Dr. Stephan Grupp, a leading researcher on CAR-T cell treatment methods, gave a presentation on current clinical research on acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), which is the most common form of childhood cancer. In particular, he spoke of the new class of drugs for ALL that he has developed with his research team.   

Before the symposium’s opening ceremony, there was an “Early Bird Session,” which was designed to provide essential information to graduate students in attendance so that they could effectively follow the presentations and lectures. According to Professor Lee Byoung-suk, director of the medical school: “This symposium is not about research for research’s sake. It is about how the development of pharmaceuticals can be applied to real-life clinical trials. How we approach a problem is the crucial point in any medical research. The symposium is important because it has shown how clinical medical studies are related to foundational medical studies.”