June 2025

Mansi Saxena, PhD; Jonathan Anker, MD, PhD; Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD; Matthew Galsky, MD, and colleagues

Atezolizumab plus personalized neoantigen vaccination in urothelial cancer: a phase 1 trial

Nature Cancer. 2025 May 9. PMID: 40346292

With a goal of stimulating antitumor immunity, this study evaluated atezolizumab (anti-programmed cell death protein 1 ligand 1) in combination with PGV001, a personalized neoantigen vaccine, in patients with urothelial cancer. At a median follow-up of 39 months, three of four trial participants treated in the adjuvant setting were free of recurrence and two of five participants treated in the metastatic setting achieved an objective response. All participants demonstrated on-treatment emergence of neoantigen-specific T cell responses. Findings show that combination treatment with an immune checkpoint inhibitor and a personalized neoantigen peptide vaccine is safe and feasible in patients with urothelial cancer.

Press Release

Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, was awarded the title of Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur [Knight of the Legion of Honor] by the French Republic. The prestigious distinction, presented at the Consulate General of France in New York by the Ambassador of France to the United States, honors Dr. Merad’s research elucidating the role of innate immune cells in cancer and chronic inflammatory disease and her leadership in transforming translational research and precision medicine. 

Press Release

Elvin Wagenblast, PhD, was selected as an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) NextGen Star. As such, he gave an oral presentation—"Developmental Dependency and Metabolic Vulnerabilities in NUP98-rearranged Pediatric Leukemia”—at the AACR Annual Meeting 2025 in April.

Dmitriy Zamarin, MD, PhD, was awarded the Pershing Square Ovarian Cancer Challenge Grant in collaboration with Brian Brown, PhD. Their study—“Breaking Down Barriers: Overcoming Ovarian Cancer Immunosuppression and Tumor Microenvironment”—will investigate a new therapy as a strategy to enhance the effectiveness of immunotherapy. In parallel, Drs. Zamarin and Brown and team will employ a cutting-edge platform combining CRISPR screening, imaging, and spatial transcriptomics to uncover critical parts of the immune system that influence immune recognition and resistance.

Pershing Square Philanthropies Announcement

Dmitriy Zamarin, MD, PhD

Brian Brown, PhD

Four fellows are recipients of 2025 Conquer Cancer Career Development Awards from the American Society of Clinical Oncology:



Judy Li, MD, Surgical Oncology Research Fellow

Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium Merit Award

“Investigating Survival Outcomes in Patients with Early- vs Late-Onset Colorectal Cancer With Liver Metastases”

Max Dougherty, MD, Hematology and Medical Oncology Fellow

Young Investigator Award

“Mechanisms of Resistance and Response to Hypomethylating Agents in Myelodysplastic Syndrome”

Eric Miller, MD, Hematology and Medical Oncology Fellow

Young Investigator Award

“Keratin 19 (KRT19) as a Tool to Measure Disease Burden and Guide Treatment in Urothelial Cancer”

Zachary Avigan, MD, MHS, Hematology and Medical Oncology Fellow

Young Investigator Award

“Identifying the Role of Clonal Hematopoiesis and Inflammation in Driving Hematologic Toxicity Following Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell (CAR-T) Therapy in Multiple Myeloma”

Dr. Avigan is also the 2025 recipient of the Paul Carbone, MD Fellowship Award from ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group. One award is given each year to an outstanding senior oncology or hematology research fellow at a member institution.

Do you have breaking news/high impact news that might be appropriate for media coverage? Contact Diego Ortiz Quintero in the Press Office. The more lead time, the better.

See recent press releases at https://icahn.mssm.edu/research/tisch under Discover the Latest.

The TCI Human Immune Monitoring Center Shared Resource (HIMCSR) is a consortium of immunologists, technologists, clinicians, and computational biologists focused on generating immune profiling datasets to interrogate the etiology of cancer, novel biomarkers of disease course, and response to immunotherapy trials in cancer patients.

The Human Immune Monitoring Center has recently expanded its cutting-edge technology platforms, with enhanced capabilities in multiplex immunoassays and spatial transcriptomic analysis. In parallel, the center's bioinformatic pipelines are continuously being optimized to uncover the multifaceted complexity of the immune system and to enable high-resolution insights into immune dynamics across diverse disease contexts.

New platforms:

• Olink Explore HT 5,400 protein (high-throughput biomarker discovery)
• Olink Reveal 1,000 protein (NGS-based proteomics)
• Xenium Spatial Platform (whole transcriptome spatial gene expression analysis at single cell scale)

Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, and Sacha Gnjatic, PhD, are Co-Directors of the Human Immune Monitoring Center. Seunghee Kim-Schulze, PhD, is Facility Director.

The services of The Tisch Cancer Institute Biostatistics Shared Resource can significantly increase the likelihood of successful grant awards. The first step is to submit a request for services. Allow four weeks for grant development.

Questions can be directed to Erin Moshier, MSc, Managing Director.

Matthew Galsky, MD, is Principal Investigator on a newly launched clinical trial for bladder cancer that will enroll about 1,000 patients at more than 300 sites: Testing the Role of DNA Released From Tumor Cells Into the Blood in Guiding the Use of Immunotherapy After Surgical Removal of the Bladder for Bladder Cancer Treatment, MODERN Study (ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT05987241).

The randomized, phase II/III, biomarker-integrated trial utilizes a personalized and tumor-informed molecular residual disease test to help guide personalized treatment based on molecular status in patients with muscle-invasive urothelial cancer (MIUC) who have undergone radical cystectomy. The trial may help doctors determine if measuring circulating tumor DNA in blood can identify patients who need additional treatment, if treatment with nivolumab prolongs overall survival, and whether additional immunotherapy treatment with relatlimab extends progression-free survival or overall survival.

The MODERN trial was made possible by results of the CheckMate 274 trial (NCT02632409), which established the safety and efficacy of adjuvant nivolumab in MIUC, as reported by Dr. Galsky and colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Read More

Goutam Chakraborty, PhD, and colleagues



BCL2 drives castration resistance in castration-sensitive prostate cancer by orchestrating reciprocal crosstalk between oncogenic pathways

Cell Reports. 2025 May 30. PMID: 40448998

This study investigated the critical role of crosstalk between cell signaling networks in early castration resistance in prostate cancer. Findings show a non-canonical reciprocal signaling loop involving the AR-BCL2-PI3K/AKT pathways in castration-sensitive prostate cancer cells, suggesting that this loop acts as a key driver of early castration resistance. Targeting BCL2 in conjunction with standard care therapy (ADT) could potentially block or delay ADT induced transition of castration-sensitive prostate cancer to metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, ultimately reducing mortality associated with prostate cancer.

Josep Llovet, MD, PhD, and colleagues

Hepatocellular carcinoma: ESMO Clinical Practice Guideline for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up

Annals of Oncology. 2025 May. PMID: 39986353

The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Clinical Practice Guideline provides key recommendations for managing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The guideline covers imaging and diagnosis, staging and risk assessment, treatment, and follow-up. Dr. Llovet, Director of the Liver Cancer Program, and colleagues—a multidisciplinary group of experts—provide algorithms for the management of HCC at early, intermediate, and advanced stages.

Laurie Margolies, MD, and colleagues

Artificial intelligence for assessment of digital mammography positioning reveals persistent challenges

Journal of Breast Imaging. 2025 May 30. PMID: 40445914

This study used artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate mammography positioning on digital screening mammograms (DSMs) to identify and quantify unmet mammography positioning quality (MPQ). Data were collected from 126,367 digital mammography studies (553,339 images) from multiple institutions. Insights from the study suggest that the integration of AI tools into quality assurance programs can shed light on the scope and nature of positioning difficulties and support a sustained focus on technologist training and continuous quality improvement. These initiatives are crucial for maximizing cancer detection rates and fully leveraging DSM capabilities.

Melissa Mazor, PhD, MS, RN; Sarah Miller, PsyD; Layla Fattah, EdD; Jamilia Sly, PsyD, and colleagues

Empowering the next generation of cancer research advocates: Community engagement across the research continuum

American Society of Clinical Oncology Educational Book. 2025 Apr 17.

PMID: 40245346

This study examines advocacy as a form of community engagement across the cancer research continuum, with goals of advancing cancer research, improving health outcomes, and ensuring inclusivity and relevance for all communities. Dr. Mazor and team address challenges including institutional barriers and historical mistrust and provide actionable recommendations that can help inform study designs and translation of findings into policy and practice.

Nina Bickell, MD, MPH, and colleagues

Does regionalization of initial breast cancer care delay time to surgery?

Cancer. 2025 May 15. PMID: 40344207

This study examined the impact of the 2009 NY statewide Medicaid Breast Cancer Selective Contracting policy, which required that Medicaid enrollees receive breast cancer surgery at higher volume facilities, on time to initial upfront surgery among women with stage I–III breast cancer. Findings suggest that regionalizing care to higher volume facilities appears to improve breast cancer outcomes. However, Medicaid beneficiaries in nonurban areas experienced more delays to surgery, highlighting the importance of safeguarding against unintended consequences of policies affecting access to care.

The Hematology/Medical Oncology + Hospice and Palliative Medicine Training Program, is featured here. Under the leadership of Adriana Malone, MD; Anup S. Bharani, MD; and Mollie A. Biewald, MD, the specialized fellowship program is one of just a handful in the country.

Jerry Edward Chipuk, PhD, presented a Keynote Lecture—"A Gated Hydrophobic Funnel Within BAX Binds Bioactive Lipids to Potentiate Pro-Apoptotic Function"—at the European Workshop on Cell Death, May 16-20, in Fiuggi, Italy. 

John Mascarenhas, MD, will be the presenting author of an abstract selected for the Late-Breaking Oral Session on June 15 at the European Hematology Association 2025 Congress in Milan: "INCA33989 is a Novel, First in Class, Mutant Calreticulin-Specific Monoclonal Antibody That Demonstrates Safety and Efficacy in Patients With Essential Thrombocythemia."



Abstract (pages 3-4)

Eirini Papapetrou, MD, PhD, will present at the FASEB Conference on Hematologic Malignancies, July 27-31, in Southbridge, Massachusetts. She will be a keynote speaker at the Cancer Center Amsterdam Annual Conference on June 20.

Maaike van Gerwen, MD, PhD, is an invited speaker at the 2025 annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, July 12-15, in San Francisco. She will present “Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in Thyroid Carcinogenesis.”

TCI Seminar Series

Tuesdays at Noon

Davis Auditorium

June 10

Emily Bernstein, PhD

"Chromatin Remodeling Mutations in Cancer"

Hematology/Medical Oncology Grand Rounds



June 12, 8:30 am

Stephan Moll, MD, University of North Carolina

"Venous Thromboembolism, Thrombophilia, Anticoagulation: What the Hem-Onc Provider Wants to Know"

Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, is Co-Chair of the Ninth International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference CICON25—Translating Science Into Survival-- taking place September 10-12 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Presented by the Cancer Research Institute and the European Network for Cancer Immunotherapy, the conference is a transnational forum of basic and translational research in cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy.

Registration