Putting research into practice: Pedagogy development workshops change the teaching philosophy of graduate students

Teaching competence is an important skill for graduate students to acquire and is often considered a precursor to an academic career. In this study, we evaluated the effects of a multi-day teaching workshop on graduate teaching philosophies by surveying 200 graduate students, 79 of whom had taken the workshops and 121 who had not. We found no difference between groups (workshop attendees versus non-attendees) in their beliefs that (a) it is important to focus on in-depth learning of core concepts when teaching and (b) “memorization” is a poor learning strategy for students. On average, however, respondents who had taken the workshop allocated more in-class time for student-to-student discussions (interactive engagement) and placed less emphasis on lecturing. These results suggest that graduate students are generally aware of the importance of conceptual learning, but workshop attendees have clearer ideas on how to teach for effective learning. RÉSUMÉ La capacité d’enseigner est une compétence importante pour les étudiants en formation doctorale et est souvent considérée comme un attribut nécessaire à la poursuite d’une carrière académique. Lors de cette étude, nous avons évalué les effets d’un atelier de développement pédagogique de plusieurs jours sur la philosophie d’enseignement des étudiants en thèse en interrogeant 200 sujets - 79 qui avaient assisté aux ateliers et 121 qui n’y avaient pas participé. Nous n’avons trouvé aucune différence entre les groupes (ceux qui ont participé à l’atelier par rapport aux non-participants) dans leur croyance que (a) lors de l’enseignement, il est important de se concentrer sur l’apprentissage en profondeur des concepts principaux et (b) la «mémorisation» est une mauvaise stratégie d’apprentissage pour les étudiants. Cependant, en moyenne, les répondants qui avaient participé à l’atelier ont consacré plus de temps à des discussions entre étudiants (engagement interactif) et ont accordé moins d’importance aux cours magistraux. Ces résultats suggèrent que les étudiants de niveau doctoral sont généralement conscients de l’importance de l’apprentissage conceptuel, mais que ceux qui ont participé aux ateliers ont des idées plus claires pour faciliter un tel apprentissage

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Immune systems biology: immunoprofiling of cells and molecules

White blood cells and their secreted products are key elements of immune systems biology that are important indicators of patient health and disease. We have developed the SurroScan™ microvolume laser scanning cytometer to immunoprofile hundreds of variables, including cell populations, cell surface antigens, and intracellular molecules in antibody-based assays on small samples (about 1 mL) of whole blood, processed blood, or other fluids without cell purification or washing steps. The system enables high-throughput, robust and automated data capture and analysis. We demonstrate the utility of this immunoprofiling technology platform by surveying patient samples before and after glucocorticosteroid administration and show both the expected and novel response characteristics. This system complements recent advances in genomic and proteomic approaches to disease prediction and monitoring