On April 2, 2018, Kienzle received her genetically engineered white blood cells. Over the next 30 days, her body fought hard, through severe side effects and four days in a coma. On May 2, a scan announced the result: Her tumors had vanished. “It’s a miracle,” she says. Pittsburgh’s groundbreaking work in immunology — the study of how the body’s immune system can be activated to fight invaders from within — has bettered the odds for patients like Kienzle. Dr. Robert Ferris, director of Hillman Cancer Center, says the field is in a state of transformative discoveries. Moreover, in addition to surgery, radiation and chemo, immunotherapy is now “a fourth modality” for successfully treating tumors and blood cancers. “Many diseases are joining the immunology club — including, recently, triple negative breast cancer,” he says. “We’re getting to [therapy] results that double positive response. Now the question is how to combine immunology with other therapies. We almost have to relearn oncology.” Hillman researchers have led the way. Among other breakthroughs, its labs have identified two of the world’s major cancer-causing viruses. Its clinicians are deploying CAR T-cell therapy. Integrating discoveries in genomics and drug development with immunology, researchers are taking giant steps toward realizing the dream of personalized medicine, the type of medical intervention in which treatment is customized for an individual patient. The weapons are huge. But the local donations that make them possible are large and small. Take the fund created at The Pittsburgh Foundation in 1964 by Portia Hosler, an Alcoa secretary from Avalon who endowed a fund with $36,000 in 1995 to study pancreatic cancer, among other causes. Or physician Rose Neumann, who honored her parents with the creation of the $18,000 Marchand Fund in 1964. Or Robert Kohman, whose gift of $14.5 million in 2003 funds cancer research as well as assistance for patients. A decade ago, the Foundation decided to combine six such funds for early sustained support of experimental research at Hillman. “Immunology and personalized medicine were the direction that our Board’s subcommittee, which includes physicians, recommended,” THE FOUR PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION ENDOWED CHAIRS AT HILLMAN CANCER CENTER: (THE FIFTH TO BE NAMED) Patrick S. Moore, MD, MPH Distinguished and American Cancer Society Professor UPMC Hillman Cancer Center & University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Pittsburgh Foundation Endowed Chair in Innovative Cancer Research Adrian Lee, PhD Director, UPMC/University of Pittsburgh Institute for Precision Medicine Professor, Pharmacology & Chemical Biology, Women’s Cancer Research Center at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center & Magee-Womens Research Institute Pittsburgh Foundation Endowed Chair in Precision Medicine Warren Shlomchik, MD Director, Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant and Cell Therapy, UPMC Hillman Cancer Center Professor, Medicine and Immunology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Pittsburgh Foundation Endowed Chair in Cancer Immunotherapy Designate* Shou-Jiang Gao, PhD Director, UPMC Hillman Cancer Center Cancer Virology Program Professor, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Pittsburgh Foundation Endowed Chair in Drug Development for Immunotherapy Drs. Patrick S. Moore, the Foundation’s endowed chair in innovative cancer research, and Yuan Chang received the 2017 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for discovering two of the seven known human viruses that cause cancer. Both are University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine faculty members. *awarding process is currently underway T H E P I T T S B U R G H F O U N D AT I O N 6 F O R U M