Congrats to two students in the dual degree (M.D./Ph.D.) South Texas Medical Scientist Training Program who received travel awards to present at the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) Annual Meeting in Honolulu, HI this May.

MSTP student, Ryan Reyes (GS3, left), will share his findings regarding the mechanistic insights into the use of novel bladder cancer immunotherapies in a competitive platform presentation.  Ryan and Myrna are both students in the lab of Dr. Tyler Curiel (right).

“Selection for an oral presentation and travel award is an incredible honor and shows that the AAI community is enthusiastic about my research findings,” Reyes said. “The travel award significantly offsets the financial burden of traveling to a meeting in such a desirable but distant location.”

Myrna Garcia (GS2, above) recently won first place poster presentation at the STX-MSTP spring retreat in April, 2019. At AAI, she will present a poster on her continuing findings on the effects of aging on efficacy of cancer immunotherapy agents against melanoma. The title of her poster is:
“Distinct responses to αPD-1, αPD-L1 and αPD-L2 immunotherapy in aged versus young hosts includes T-cell stem cell effects and PD-L2 expression differences.”

“I am really excited to be able to share my research on how age-related changes, in particular age-related immune changes, affect tumor response to immune checkpoint blockade agents. The field of cancer immunotherapy and tumor immunology is expanding at an incredible rate and we are all trying to improve understanding and eventually clinical outcomes of available and novel cancer immunotherapies,” Garcia said. “Having the opportunity to be a part of such a novel project as a graduate student is so exciting and I want to share my findings with experts in the field and with the greater immunology community to hear feedback and to learn the types of research other people are conducting.”