Year In Review — PICI’s Progress in 2023

Accelerating new cancer research and discoveries: PICI’s impact in 2023

The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy’s (PICI) mission has always been to break down barriers and drive patient impact. Our North Star is the delivery of curative treatments to as many patients as possible. Since our inception in 2016, PICI has proudly laid the groundwork to foster unprecedented collaborations and accelerate breakthrough treatments for cancer patients. To support our mission, visit parkerici.org/donate.

At the core of PICI is the work of our academic research centers, world leaders in immuno-oncology, autoimmunity, synthetic biology, and other frontiers in medicine. Pioneering a novel collaboration model, we fund ambitious research programs and help steward our investigators’ scientific discoveries for rapid and meaningful patient impact.

PICI has supported more than 425 research projects and clinical trials, engaging nearly 800 of the world’s top oncology investigators and early career researchers. Our progress to date has been incredible, with a focus on Network growth, supporting groundbreaking research, and continuing to build collaboration and community in immuno-oncology.

2023 was no exception for us in driving impact in the field. Here’s a look back at some of our PICI Network achievements:

SCIENTIFIC LEADERSHIP

• 56 research projects at nine institutions involved 154 PICI-funded Network researchers, leading to 160+ publications. Notable outputs include:
  • Eight exceptional early career researcher projects
  • T cell receptor sequences are the dominant factor contributing to the phenotype of CD8+ T cells with specificities against immunogenic viral antigens, Cell Reports
  • Chimeric antigen receptor T cells as adjuvant therapy for unresectable adenocarcinoma, Science Advances
  • T cell immunotherapies engage neutrophils to eliminate tumor antigen escape variants, Cell Reports
  • Immunotherapy combination approaches: mechanisms, biomarkers and clinical observations, Nature Reviews Immunology
  • Immuno-metabolic dendritic cell vaccine signatures associated with overall survival in vaccinated melanoma patients, Nature Communications
  • Mitigation of chromosome loss in clinical CRISPR-Cas9-engineered T cells, Cell Reports
  • Structural surface-omics reveals an AML-specific conformation of integrin β2 as a CAR T cellular therapy target, Nature Cancer
  • Base-editing mutagenesis maps alleles to tune human T cell functions, Nature
  • Modular pooled discovery of synthetic knockin sequences to program durable cell therapies, Cell
  • Immune checkpoint blockade induces distinct alterations in the microenvironments of primary and metastatic brain tumors, The Journal of Clinical Investigation
  • Deletion of the inhibitory co-receptor CTLA-4 enhances and invigorates chimeric antigen receptor T cells, Cell
  • Epitope base editing CD45 in hematopoietic cells enables universal blood cancer immune therapy, Science: Translational Medicine
  • Stat5 opposes the transcription factor Tox and rewires exhausted CD8+ T cells toward durable effector-like states during chronic antigen exposure, Cell
  • Dual-inhibitory domain iCARs improve the efficiency of the AND-NOT gate CAR T strategy, PNAS

MILESTONES

• New PICI Center launched at Weill Cornell Medicine, expanding PICI’s footprint on the East Coast
• Kole Roybal, PhD, named Center Director for PICI at the University of California, San Francisco
• 500+ attendees at “Of Medicine and Miracles” screenings, celebrating the work of Carl H. June, MD, Center Director for PICI at The University of Pennsylvania
• Groundbreaking partnership with Guardant Health to study the correlation between molecular cancer biomarkers and patient response to immunotherapy treatment across more than 14 types of cancer

TOP NEWS

• The 2023 PharmaVoice 100 featuring Alex Marson, PhD, Center Director for PICI at Gladstone Institutes and PICI board member Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Sonoma Biotherapeutics, PharmaVoice
• Cargo, undeterred by market challenges, seeks $281M IPO, a PICI-funded company, Fierce Biotech
• The Endpoints 11: The biotech startups making the biggest bets with the most exciting science in 2023, including PICI-funded Arsenalbio, Endpoints News
• Kite Completes Acquisition of Tmunity, a PICI-funded company, Gilead
• Special report 2023: Meet 20 women reshaping biopharma, spotlighting Crystal Mackall, MD, Center Director for the PICI Center at Stanford Medicine, Endpoints News