Speaker Profile
PMWC LUMINARY AWARD
Helped shape modern cancer immunotherapy and its clinical translation
M.D., Ph.D., Director, Tumor Immunology, Cancer Center; Director, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, UCLA
Biography
Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, is professor of medicine, surgery, and molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and director of the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC). Ribas is a physician-scientist conducting laboratory and clinical translational research in how melanoma responds or resists to cancer immunotherapies, and developing gene engineered adoptive cell transfer therapies. He has been instrumental in the clinical development of several agents approved by the FDA, including the first anti-PD-1 pembrolizumab (Keytruda), the anti-CTLA-4 tremelimumab (Imjudo), as well as two combinations of BRAF and MEK inhibitors, vemurafenib (Zelboraf) and cobimetinib (Cotellic), and dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist). He is a past president of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), an elected Fellow of the AACR Academy, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the US National Academy of Medicine.
Talk
How melanoma became a treatable cancer
Advanced melanoma used to be an untreatable cancer, resistant to all types of cancer therapy. With the improved understanding of how to target driver oncogenes and how to release the immune checkpoints, now half of the patients go onto live a normal life.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2027 Silicon Valley
Track Chair:
Razelle Kurzrock, Emory
PMWC Award Ceremony
• Antoni Ribas, UCLA Health (Luminary)
Featured Speakers
• Antoni Ribas, UCLA Health
• Gerold Meinhardt, Daiichi Sankyo
• Katy Rezvani, MD Anderson
• Javad Shahidi, BeOne
• Alicia Zhou, Cancer Research Institute
• Oren Gilad, Aprea Therapeutics
• Adam Palmer, UNC
• Trever Bivona, UCSF
• Laura Volta, Penn Medicine
• Vivek Subbiah, Stanford
• Mark Stewart, Friends of Cancer Research
Precision Immunotherapy After PD-1
Cells, bispecifics, ADCs, and new combination logic after checkpoint failure.
Biomarkers That Matter
Selecting patients for immunotherapy and targeted therapy with decision-grade biomarkers.
Resistance Biology & Adaptive Combination Strategies
How tumors adapt, and how to sequence therapy around that biology.
Which Immune Cells Can Be Programmed In Vivo?
The next wave of immune-cell engineering and where it may matter first.
Rare Cancers, Basket Trials & N-of-1 Playbooks
Moving from histology-agnostic evidence to individualized precision oncology.
PMWC Hall of Impact
Previous Speakers Include
Nobel laureates, technology founders, regulators, CEOs and scientific pioneers who have taken the PMWC stage.
