2023 Virginia Tech Cancer Research Alliance Retreat

This retreat is so incredibly important because you are bringing together these basic scientists, engineers, veterinarians, cancer researchers, non cancer researchers, clinicians altogether in one room listening to all this great science. And you never know where your next ideas are going to come from or your next collaborations are going to come from. It's only because of retreats like this that organically and syndipitously these interactions can happen. Vaccine is simply something that induces immune response against an antigen. And in this case we're treating people who already have the disease, who have cancer. And that allows us to identify the target antigens in the cancer to make a vaccine against that cancer. This has been an incredibly exciting meeting so far, people coming at cancer from all different directions. This is really the heart of what Virginia Tech is about. This Cancer Research Alliance retreat has absolutely captured that spirit. Being here with our colleagues from Children's National Hospital and the Johnson and Johnson J Lab folks. It just has a whole other dimension. The approaches to common problems with different perspectives is exactly what is needed in the field. We have a drive because pediatric brain cancer are in large part not very curable. And then you have really smart and creative scientists, whether they're clinical scientists or bench scientists, who recognize that mission and get really excited about trying to overcome the obstacles that have prevented us from carrying these children. Previously, it is going to take a village and we all need to try and speak the same language, scientific language, so we can understand each other. And then work together to tackle one of the more challenging cancers that we face.