Session Chair Profile
Ph.D., Senior Data Scientist, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy
Biography
Danny Wells is a scientist with a passion for translating insights from multi-omic data analysis into clinically actionable results. At the Parker Institute, Danny drives development and execution of programs within reverse translational medicine, including programs in PD-1 resistance, the immune landscape of castration resistant prostate cancer, and neoantigen discovery (TESLA). His has published more than a dozen papers journals such as Nature, Nature Medicine, and Cancer Discovery and he is an internationally recognized speaker on topics at the intersection of cancer immunotherapy and data science. Before joining the Parker Institute Danny was a biophysics postdoc studying the origin of animal multicellularity at UC-Berkeley, and completed his Ph.D. in applied math at Northwestern.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2020 Silicon Valley
Session Synopsis: The advent of immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment. Specifically, the development of antibodies that target and block signaling through immune checkpoints has led to promising clinical results in a variety of cancers. Antibodies against immune checkpoints such as CTLA-4, PD-1, and PD-L1 have received FDA approval for the treatment of a growing number of solid tumors. Despite the success of single-agent immune checkpoint blockade therapy, clinical benefit has been limited to a minority of patients. This session will explore emerging checkpoint inhibitors and other immunomodulatory agents designed to further improve clinical response rates and outcomes.
