On 28th November OxTalks will move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events' (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
There will be an OxTalks freeze beginning on Friday 14th November. This means you will need to publish any of your known events to OxTalks by then as there will be no facility to publish or edit events in that fortnight. During the freeze, all events will be migrated to the new Oxford Events site. It will still be possible to view events on OxTalks during this time.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
New therapies that promote antitumor immunity have been recently developed. Most of these immunomodulatory approaches have focused on enhancing T-cell responses, either by targeting inhibitory pathways with immune checkpoint inhibitors, or by targeting activating pathways, as with chimeric antigen receptor T cells or bispecific antibodies. Although these therapies have led to unprecedented successes, only a minority of patients with cancer benefit from these treatments, highlighting the need to identify new cells and molecules that could be exploited in the next generation of immunotherapy. Given the crucial role of innate immune responses in immunity, harnessing these responses opens up new possibilities for long-lasting, multilayered tumor control. We will present innovative anti-tumor therapies based on the manipulation of the innate immune system. In addition, given the urgent need for effective treatments for pneumonia in patients with COVID-19, the elucidation of the immune responses that occur during the course of COVID-19 could lead to the repurposing of approved immunomodulatory drugs and candidate drugs that have already been tested in clinical trials. Along this line, we will present our results indicating the association of COVID-19 inflammation with activation of the C5a–C5aR1 axis.