Program overview
Padmanee Sharma, MD, PhD, presents the Spring 2023 Penn State College of Medicine Dean's Lecture.
Credit
CME credit is available for those who attended live.
Penn State College of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. Penn State College of Medicine designates this live activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™.
Learning objectives
- Learn about the neoadjuvant approach for immune checkpoint therapy as well as identify the ICOS/ICOSL pathway as a novel target for cancer immunotherapy strategies.
- Learn about how Dr. Sharma also led the clinical trials with immune checkpoint therapy (nivolumab and nivolumab plus ipilimumab) in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), which led to FDA-approval of these agents as treatment for patients with RCC.
- Identify novel resistance mechanisms, including loss of interferon (IFN) signaling, VISTA+ immunosuppressive cells, increased EZH2 expression in T cells, TGFβ signaling in bone metastases, and CD73+ myeloid cells in GBM.
Padmanee Sharma, MD, PhD
Professor of Genitourinary Medical Oncology and Immunology
Associate VP of Immunobiology and the T.C. and Jeanette D. Hsu Endowed Chair in Cell Biology
Scientific Director for the Immunotherapy Platform
MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Sharma is a nationally and internationally renowned physician scientist whose research work is focused on investigating mechanisms and pathways within the immune system that facilitate tumor rejection or elicit resistance to immune checkpoint therapy. She is a Professor in the departments of Genitourinary Medical Oncology and Immunology, Associate VP of Immunobiology and the T.C. and Jeanette D. Hsu Endowed Chair in Cell Biology, at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She is also the inaugural Scientific Director for the Immunotherapy Platform at MD Anderson Cancer Center. As Scientific Director, she designs and supervises immune monitoring studies for over 100 different immunotherapy clinical trials. In 2022 she became the Director of Scientific Programs for the James P. Allison Institute at MD Anderson.
Dr. Sharma is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). She received the Emil Frei III Award for Excellence in Translational Research in 2016, the Coley Award for Distinguished Research for Tumor Immunology in 2018, the Women in Science with Excellence (WISE) award in 2020, the Heath Memorial Award in 2021 and the Randall Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research in 2021.
Dr. Sharma has mentored over 50 graduate students, medical students, postdoctoral fellows, clinical fellows, and junior faculty since 2005. She also mentors undergraduate summer students, including underrepresented minorities from Puerto Rico and Howard University, each summer. She is currently mentoring 3 post docs, 3 graduate students, 2 clinical fellows and 4 junior faculty. She provides excellent leadership, guidance, expertise and invests her time for the success of the careers of these young scientists.
In 2006, Dr. Sharma designed and conducted the first neoadjuvant (pre-surgical) trial, also known as a window-of-opportunity trial, with immune checkpoint therapy (anti-CTLA-4, ipilimumab), which allowed her to establish safety of the neoadjuvant approach for immune checkpoint therapy as well as provide tumor tissues for translational research studies. She identified the ICOS/ICOSL pathway as a novel target for cancer immunotherapy strategies. The neoadjuvant clinical trial in 2006 was also the first trial with immune checkpoint therapy in patients with bladder cancer. The clinical data indicated that 25% of patients had significant anti-tumor responses with pathologic complete responses. These data led Dr. Sharma to conduct additional clinical trials with immune checkpoint therapy (anti-PD-1, nivolumab) for patients with bladder cancer, which enabled FDA-approval of nivolumab as treatment for patients with metastatic bladder cancer. Dr. Sharma also led the clinical trials with immune checkpoint therapy (nivolumab and nivolumab plus ipilimumab) in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), which led to FDA-approval of these agents as treatment for patients with RCC.
Dr. Sharma is the Principal Investigator for multiple immunotherapy clinical trials. Her studies have identified novel resistance mechanisms, including loss of interferon (IFN) signaling, VISTA+ immunosuppressive cells, increased EZH2 expression in T cells, TGFβ signaling in bone metastases, and CD73+ myeloid cells in GBM. Her work continues to drive the development of immunotherapy strategies for the treatment of cancer patients.
Dr. Sharma holds a PhD in immunology and an MD from Pennsylvania State University. She completed her clinical residency at New York Hospital, Cornell Medical Center in New York, and her clinical fellowship was completed at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.