How can the immune system’s natural recognition of cancer be translated into more effective, personalized therapies? And what determines whether a cancer vaccine succeeds in generating a meaningful antitumor response? These questions will be at the centre of the next P4Health Open Seminar, which will bring together two internationally experienced researchers in cancer immunotherapy: Prof. Stephen P. Schoenberger (La Jolla Institute for Immunology) and Dr. Lisa H. Butterfield (Cancer Immunotherapy Consultant and Advisory Board Member).
The seminar will take place on October 1, 2026, at 11:00 PM.
An important change for this edition concerns the venue: the event will be hosted at the Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Rudolfa Weigla 12, 53-114 Wrocław.
The seminar will also be streamed online, allowing participants to join remotely. The streaming link will be announced shortly.
During the first lecture, “Natural T cell Immunity to Cancer Neoantigens,” Prof. Stephen P. Schoenberger will focus on novel computational and functional immunology tools that make it possible to identify and characterize physiological T-cell responses in individual cancer patients. He will also discuss experience with personalized cancer vaccines designed to target tumor mutations already recognized by a patient’s own immune response.
This approach builds on the idea that each patient’s tumor carries an individual set of mutations and that some of these can be naturally recognized by T cells as neoantigens. Prof. Schoenberger’s research combines bioinformatics and cellular immunology to identify such tumor mutations and the T-cell receptors involved in their recognition, with the broader goal of translating quantitative immunology into personalized cancer treatment.
The second lecture, “Biomarkers of cancer vaccine responses,” by Dr. Lisa H. Butterfield, will examine why cancer vaccines produce strong immune responses in some settings while their clinical effects can vary considerably between patients. Her presentation will focus on vaccines based on autologous dendritic cells and on mechanisms that may influence their ability to generate antitumor immunity. These include costimulation, antigen source, cytokine mediators and cellular metabolism.
Taken together, the two presentations will provide complementary perspectives on cancer vaccination: from identifying the tumor-specific targets naturally recognized by a patient’s immune system to understanding the biological mechanisms and biomarkers associated with successful vaccine-induced responses.
Prof. Stephen P. Schoenberger, Ph.D. is Professor at the Center for Immunotherapy at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, Director of Translational Science at the San Diego Center for Precision Immunotherapy, and Adjunct Professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. His work spans fundamental and translational immunology, with a particular focus on precision cancer immunotherapy. His research has contributed to understanding how CD4+ T cells support CD8+ T-cell effector function and memory, as well as to the development of approaches for identifying tumor neoantigens and the T-cell receptors that recognize them.
Lisa H. Butterfield, Ph.D. is a consultant and advisory board member in cancer immunotherapy. From 2023 to 2026, she was a Distinguished Scientist in Discovery-Oncology at Merck Research Laboratories, where her work focused on solid-tumor immuno-oncology, cancer vaccines and biomarkers. Previously, she served as Vice President of Research and Development at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and as Adjunct Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. Her academic research has focused on cancer vaccines and cellular therapies. She is also a former President of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer and has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, reviews and book chapters.
Join us on October 1 at 11:00 PM at the Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy in Wrocław or follow the seminar online.
Online streaming: [LINK TBA]