Lawrence Fong, MD

Biography

Lawrence Fong, M.D. is the Efim Guzik Distinguished Professor in Cancer Biology and the founding director of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program at the University of California, San Francisco. He also co-directs the Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy at UCSF and the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program in the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Fong earned a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.D. from Stanford University. As a physician-scientist, he has been a leader of both pre-clinical and clinical studies of multiple FDA-approved cancer immunotherapies including anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-(L)1 antibodies. His laboratory examines the mechanisms that underlie clinical response and resistance to the different immunotherapies. His group has elucidated the contribution of non-canonical immune effectors such as cytotoxic CD4 T cells and gamma delta T cells within the tumor microenvironment. He is an elected member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He is an NIH Outstanding Investigator Award recipient. He has served on Scientific Steering Committees for the NCI and Programmatic Review committees for the DOD. He has also served as inaugural senior editor for the Journal of Immunotherapy of Cancer and Cancer Immunology Research. He has been involved in multiple review committees for SITC, as well as organizer of a SITC Deep Dive Seminar and multiple SITC ACI events.

SITC Election Platform Statement

What are the two or three critical issues facing the field of cancer immunotherapy?

1. Funding: While funding has been a perennial problem, we are entering a time with tightening budgets in the NIH as well as in industry. The most vulnerable to these ensuing lean years are the early investigators. We need to not only advocate for increased research funding, but to focus additional resources to early investigators. This could include expanding the number of awards SITC could provide through our existing fellowship mechanisms.

2. Iteration: Immunotherapy has transformed cancer care for many diseases, but the majority of patients do not significantly benefit from the available treatments. Many new therapies focusing on novel targets and/or pathways have entered the clinic only to fail because of lack of clinical activity and/or limiting toxicity. When this happens, very little information is often disclosed. In order for our field to advance, we need to be able to iterate our approaches based on what we learn both from our successes and failures. Existing tools that can assess immune responses to different treatments in patients should be applied broadly and the data shared. SITC provides a focused community where these results could be disseminated and digested to enable evolved, next-generation immunotherapies.

3. Training: We need to continue training the next-generation leaders of the field. SITC is already recognized as a leader in this regard by supporting young investigators through the Sparkathon program, fellowship grants, annual meeting events and travel awards, as well as a dedicated Early Career Scientist committee. Expanding the number of young investigators who can benefit from these programs will allow for a more diverse and inclusive pool of scientists and clinicians entering our field.

What is Your Vision for SITC?

While multiple societies now have tremendous interest in cancer immunotherapy, this has been the core focus of SITC since its inception. My vision for SITC is to continue as the leading society in cancer immunotherapy through continued engagement of a broad range of research areas. Cancer immunotherapy has and will continue to rely on multidisciplinary teams that include basic, clinical and translational investigators. By bringing together experts in different fields and providing platforms to share knowledge like with the Annual Meeting and Deep Dive Series, SITC already plays a critically important role in our field, and this need to continue. We also need to find new ways to continue attracting and supporting new investigators to our field. My goal would be to support more initiatives to engage academia, industry, government agencies and other societies to collaboratively advance our field so that we may realize the full therapeutic potential of immunotherapy.

2024 SITC Election Homepage