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Session 8 — Systems immunology (basic immunology for T-cell memory)

Series: 2026 SITC Computational IO Series, session 8 of 10 Date: October 27, 2026, 12:00–1:30 p.m. ET (90 min) Moderator: Tim Shaw, PhD — Moffitt Cancer Center Faculty:

  • Hongbo Chi, PhD — St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
  • Sidi Chen, PhD — Yale University School of Medicine

Recording: SITC OnDemand after delivery Status: Upcoming

What the session covers

Systems-level immunology of T-cell memory — the differentiation programs that determine whether an anti-tumor T-cell response persists. Chi's group works on T-cell metabolism and the signalling that governs fate decisions; Chen's group works on CRISPR screening and engineered cell therapy. Together that reads as a mechanism-plus-perturbation pairing: what controls memory, and what happens when you screen against it. Inferred from the speakers' fields; confirm after delivery.

Why it matters to this corpus

  • CRISPR screening in immune cells is the same technology family as the in vivo Perturb-seq work captured in SCGD26, applied to T cells instead of brain.
  • T-cell state and exhaustion/memory programs are the biology under both the single-cell axis (aacr-2026/topics/single-cell-spatial-omics/) and the cell-therapy trials scaffolded in sitc-2026/trials/ — durability of CAR-T and TIL responses is a memory-differentiation question.
  • Complements session 6: escape is the tumor's side of the same contest.

Open items

  • [ ] Capture the recording once posted.
  • [ ] Confirm both talk titles.
  • [ ] Link the screening platforms and any engineered-cell constructs presented.

Sources