Steven A. Rosenberg

Cancer Immunotherapy Pioneer

Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, is Chief of Surgery at the National Cancer Institute and Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Immunotherapy continues to evolve, as evidenced by groundbreaking clinical trials documenting the power of immunotherapeutic approaches to treat cancer. Much of the framework for this research can be credited to Dr. Rosenberg, a pioneer in the development of effective immunotherapies and gene therapies for patients with advanced cancers. He introduced the first effective immunotherapy for human cancer, IL2, and demonstrated that the administration of IL2 can lead to durable complete responses in patients with metastatic melanoma and renal cancer.

Dr. Rosenberg’s studies have played a major role in positioning immunotherapy as a mainstream of cancer treatment. His current research aims to define the host immune response to cancer. These studies focus on the ability of human lymphocytes to recognize unique cancer antigens and the identification of antitumor T-cell receptors that can be exploited to develop new cell transfer immunotherapies.

Dr. Rosenberg is an active member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), for which he is a Fellow of the AACR Academy. He has received numerous honors, including the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor (2015), the Partnership for Public Service’s Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal (2015), and the Cancer Research Institute’s William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology (2011).

A selection of Dr. Rosenberg’s recent articles from the AACR family of journals is provided below:

• CCR 20th Anniversary Commentary: Anniversary Commentary: Autologous T Cells—The Ultimate Personalized Drug for the Immunotherapy of Human Cancer.
  Rosenberg SA. Clinical Cancer Research December 2015.
• Targeting of HPV-16⁺ epithelial cancer cells by TCR gene engineered T cells directed against E6.
  Draper LM, Kwong ML, Gros A, Stevanovic S, Tran E, Kerkar S, et al. Clinical Cancer Research October 2015.
• Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes genetically engineered with an inducible gene encoding interleukin-12 for the immunotherapy of metastatic melanoma.
  Zhang L, Morgan RA, Beane JD, Zheng Z, Dudley ME, Kassim SH, et al. Clinical Cancer Research May 2015.
• Persistence of CTL clones targeting melanocyte differentiation antigens was insufficient to mediate significant melanoma regression in humans.
  Chandran SS, Paria BC, Srivastava AK, Rothermel LD, Stephens DJ, Dudley ME, et al. Clinical Cancer Research February 2015.
• Akt inhibition enhances expansion of potent tumor-specific lymphocytes with memory cell characteristics.
  Crompton JG, Sukumar M, Roychoudhuri R, Clever D, Gros A, Eil RL, et al. Cancer Research January 2015.