Page 11 - Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre Annual Report 2022 to 2023

9th Annual Mike and Dianne Traynor Lectureship
in Neuro-Oncology
The annual Traynor lectureship, now in its ninth year, hosted Dr. Hideho Okada
and his seminar titled “Development of T cell-based immunotherapy for
gliomas.” Dr. Okada is a Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
Dr. Okada has been dedicated to brain tumour immunology and the development
of effective immunotherapy for brain tumour patients for over 25 years. His team was one of the very first to discover cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes in glioma- associated and glioma-specific antigens. Dr. Okada also found critical roles for the integrin receptor very late activation antigen (VLA)-4 and the chemokine CXCL10 in facilitating the entry of CTLs to the brain tumour site. Dr. Okada has translated these discoveries into a number of innovative immunotherapy clinical studies in both adult and paediatric brain tumour patients. Dr. Okada’s discoveries have also led to two currently active multicenter trials, each involving 15 or more sites. Dr. Okada’s team
cloned a high-affinity T-cell receptor (TCR) against H3.3K27M and is evaluating both vaccine and TCR-transduced T cell therapy approaches.
PREVIOUS LABATT BTRC ACADEMIC GUEST LECTURERS
1999 Dr. Robert Martuza, Georgetown University
2000 Dr. Gregory Cairncross, Western University
2001 Dr. David Kaplan, Montreal Neurological Institute
2002 Dr. Charles Stiles, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
2003 Dr. Luis Parada, University of Texas
2004 Dr. Eric Holland, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
2005 Dr. Darell Bigner, Duke Cancer Institute
2006 Dr. Webster Cavenee, Ludwig Institute
2007 Dr. David H. Gutmann, St. Louis Children’s Hospital 2008 Dr. Henry Brem, Johns Hopkins University
2009 Dr. Joe Costello, UC San Francisco
2010 Dr. Waldemar Debinski, Wake Forest University 2011 Dr. Kenneth Aldape, MD Anderson Cancer Center 2012 Dr. Inder Verma, Salk Institute
2013 Dr. Fred Lang, University of Texas 2014 Dr. William Weiss, UC San Francisco
2015 Dr. Robert Wechsler-Reya, Sanford Burnham Institute 2016 Dr. Jeremy Rich, Cleveland Clinic
2017 Dr. Nada Jabado, McGill University
2018 Dr. Mitchel S. Berger, UC San Francisco
2019 Dr. Roel Verhaak, The Jackson Laboratory 2020 Dr. Michelle Monje, Stanford University
2021 Dr. Marco Marra, University of British Columbia
11