Immune Aging and Cancer Therapy Workshop
Workshop Summary
The NCI–NIA workshop on immune aging and cancer therapy, held on March 24 & 26, 2026, brought together subject matter experts to examine and discuss how immune function shaped by aging influences cancer progression and affects therapeutic efficacy and toxicity.
The workshop underscores the importance of integrating aging biology into cancer research and treatment. Addressing immune aging is essential not only for improving immunotherapy efficacy but also for minimizing toxicity and enabling precision medicine in an increasingly older cancer population. Continued interdisciplinary collaboration and biomarker-driven strategies will be critical to translating these insights into clinical impact. View the agenda for detailed information.
Opportunities highlighted in the workshop include:
- Develop immune aging–informed biomarkers integrating immune aging metrics, senescence signatures, metabolic markers, and emerging factors such as clonal hematopoiesis to improve patient stratification, predict immunotherapy response, and assess toxicity risk in older adults.
- Define how immune aging reshapes the tumor microenvironment, including the roles of senescent stromal cells, fibroblasts, endothelial cells, and suppressive myeloid populations in driving immune dysfunction and therapy resistance.
- Restore aged immune cell function by targeting mechanisms linked to immune aging, including mitochondrial dysfunction, NAD⁺ depletion, oxidative stress, and impaired T cell stemness, to improve checkpoint inhibitor and CAR T cell efficacy.
- Understand the impact of immune aging on therapy-related toxicities, particularly cardiotoxicity, vascular injury, and chronic inflammation, and develop interventions that preserve anti-tumor immunity while limiting tissue damage.
- Advance immunotherapies tailored to aging populations, including strategies to overcome age-associated immune suppression, reduced naïve T cell reserves, impaired immune reconstitution, and resistance mechanisms in solid tumors.
- Develop and refine models of immune aging and cancer, including 3D in vitro models (e.g., immune organoids), ex vivo tumor slices, aged animal models, and humanized systems, coupled with longitudinal patient sampling and spatial multi-omics platforms, to better capture the complexity, heterogeneity, and tissue-specific effects of aging on immune responses and therapy outcomes.
Planning Team: Weiwei Chen, PhD, NCI; Max Guo, PhD, NIA; Zhang-Zhi Hu, MD, NCI; Mulualem Tilahun, PhD, NIA; Sundar Venkatachalam, PhD, NCI