Title: “Clinical and biological aspects of a DC-based cancer immunotherapy”.
Dr. Flavio Salazar Onfray is a biologist from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and got his PhD at the Karolinska Institute. In 1999 he got a position at the Disciplinary Program of Immunology at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile. Dr. Salazar interest has been focused in several aspects of tumor immunology, from basic research to clinical trials. Dr. Salazar has identified and characterized new melanoma antigens British J Immunol. (2005); IOVPS (2007). During the last decade, Dr. Salazar has lead a multidisciplinary group and performed the first Phase I and Phase I/II clinical trials in Chile of immunotherapy based on dendritic cells for the treatment of melanoma and also for prostate cancer. The results of these clinical studies have been published in high impact international journals such as Clin. Exp. Immunol. (2005); J. Clin. Oncol. (2008); Clin. Cancer Res (2011) and Cancer Immunol. Immunother. (2012) Brit J cancer (2013). He and his group invented an original method to produce dendritic cells ex vivo protected by an international patent (PCT/EP2008/062909). Recently, he also described gap junction (GJ) interaction between human immune cells and tumors (J. Immunol. 2007, J. Immunol. 2011, 2014). Dr. Salazar has contributed directly to the formation of 11 Phd, and several MSc. Since 2005, Dr. Salazar (Sub director) together with Dr Kalergis (Director) leads the Institute Millennium of Immunology and Immunotherapy, where new group leaders have been formed starting new immunology groups. Dr. Salazar has pre and post graduated teaching responsibilities at the University of Chile, coordinating several courses in immunology and oncology. He has participated in several scientific societies and he is the former President of the Chilean Society of Immunology and the past President of the Latin American association of Immunology Societies (ALAI). He obtained several research grants from national and international agencies (Cancerfonden Sweden; University of Chile; FONDECYT Chile, Fondef Chile, CORFO and Millennium) and he has become the leader of several R&D projects and founds also two spin off companies, Oncobiomed in 2002, dedicated to cellular immunotherapy technology transfer and Bionex in 2007, dedicated to advice basic scientist in the design and writing of R&D applications. In 2007 and 2008, he was nominated for the innovation AVONNI price by the Forum for the innovation from the Ministry of Economy. In 2009 he was part of the Chilean President delegation during the state visit to India. From June 2014 he became Vice President of Research and Development at the University of Chile.