Webinar: Lyceum Society January 2022 Meeting

Social Chat and Announcements: 11:30 am to 11:45 am

Preliminary Presentation: 11:45 am to 12:30 pm

Speaker: Uldis Blukis

Topic: The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics

David Carr shares one-half of the prize “for his empirical contributions to labour economics.” The other half is shared equally between Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens “for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships.” I will sketch their biographies and describe their original contributions to experimental economics.

CV: Uldis Blukis is Professor Emeritus, Brooklyn College, CUNY, where he taught chemistry, integrated science, and the history of the science of matter from 1960 to 1991.  He is a co-author of a physical chemistry textbook, as well as a series of educational short films. He was in the diplomatic service of Latvia as a representative to the UN, 1991-8, and a member of the UN Committee on Contributions, 1994-2000. His BS in Chemistry is from University of Illinois, Urbana, his PhD in Physical Chemistry from University of California, Berkeley.

At our June, 2010 meeting, he spoke on Ways of knowing in Newtonian, contemporary, and future science. At our January, 2015 meeting, he spoke on Agnepilogy: Knowledge and Ignorance. At our May, 2017 meeting he spoke on Knowledge: Useful? True?. At our Feb, 2018 meeting he discussed Updating Knowledge on the Origin of Life, and at the June 2019 meeting – Technoscience is in its youth today. How may it mature?

Main Presentation: 12:30 pm to 2:15 pm

Speaker: Jedd Wolchok

Topic: Checkpoint Blockade Immunotherapy

Outline: Attention is being paid to the reasons underlying the efficacy of checkpoint blockade as an immunotherapy in certain malignancies. One hypothesis has been that cancers having a high mutational load may be more amenable to immune modulation by virtue of the larger number of potential neo-epitopes present, fostering baseline immune recognition that can then be potentiated (empowered) by checkpoint blockade. We have found that melanoma patients having long term clinical activity with the drug ipilimumab have a desired significantly greater median number of non-synonymous passenger mutations, compared with patients who do not respond or those who have only short-term regression. Strategies to enhance baseline immune reactivity are therefore necessary to investigate as means to improve the impact of checkpoint blockade on a broad spectrum of cancers. The undesired presence of suppressive myeloid cells and regulatory T cells in the tumor microenvironment is emerging as a mechanism of undesired resistance to the desired anti-tumor activity for checkpoint blockade. Strategies to overcome this include agonism of GITR and selective suppression of PI3K

CV:  Dr. Wolchok is Chief of the Immuno-Oncology Service, Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program and the Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at MSK and holds The Lloyd J. Old Chair in Clinical Investigation at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Wolchok is a clinician-scientist exploring innovative immunotherapeutic strategies in laboratory models, and a principal investigator in numerous pivotal clinical trials.  Dr. Wolchok has helped establish MSK as a leader in the discovery and treatment of cancers with novel immunotherapies. Dr. Wolchok was instrumental in the clinical development leading to the approval of ipilimumab for advanced melanoma.  He supervises an NIH R01-funded basic science laboratory which is focused on investigating novel immunotherapeutic agents in pre-clinical laboratory models. The focus of his translational research laboratory is to investigate innovative means to modulate the immune response to cancer as well as to better understand the mechanistic basis for sensitivity and resistance to currently available immunotherapies. Dr. Wolchok received his BA degree from Princeton University, and his MS, PhD and MD degrees from New York University. Dr. Wolchok has received numerous honors for his work including: American Association for Cancer Research Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Memorial Award, the Giants of Cancer Care in Melanoma Award and received the AICF Prize for Scientific excellence in Medicine.   He has received the Melvin and Sylvia Griem Lectureship in Molecular and Cellular Oncology; the Alumni Achievement Award in Clinical and Translational Science from NYU, the Alfred Taubman Prize for Excellence in Translational Medical Research and Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) James Ewing Lecturer, the RCCS Monsey Medical Devotion Award and has received the Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO) award.  Most recently, he has been awarded the Mark Foundation Grant, the Distinguished Alumni Award at MSK, the AACR-Joseph H. Burchenal Award for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Cancer Research, 2020 HOPE funds for Cancer Research Award of Excellence, the ESMO Award for Immuno-Oncology and was awarded the Hearst foundation grant.