Ludwig Stanford’s Crystal Mackall was awarded the 2025 AACR-Cancer Research Institute Lloyd J. Old Award in Cancer Immunology and delivered an award lecture during the AACR annual meeting in Chicago in late April. The AACR honored Crystal for her many contributions to cancer immunotherapy, including enhancing CAR-T cell therapies, identifying mechanisms of resistance, developing treatment algorithms for cancer immunotherapy and leading pioneering clinical trials that have opened up opportunities to apply this powerful therapy to a wider range of cancers. The AACR made special mention of her “seminal discovery of the role of IL-7 in T-cell homeostasis and her unwavering dedication to translational research, leading to the establishment of novel immunotherapeutic strategies for pediatric cancer patients.” Crystal’s early work on T cell homeostasis, the AACR observed, established the scientific foundations for lymphodepletion as a key step in adoptive cell therapies. It also noted her pioneering contributions to the clinical development of CAR-T therapy, especially trials demonstrating the extraordinarily effective use of CD19-targeted CAR-T cells in pediatric patients with B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The AACR also highlighted her work on extending the durability and applicability of CAR-T cell therapies—some of which Crystal presented in her award lecture—as being of singular importance to the field.
Back to November 2025 Ludwig Link