(Press-News.org) Dr. George Coukos, a physician-scientist and international authority on tumor immunology and cellular immunotherapy, is joining Weill Cornell Medicine on Feb. 1 to lead the new Ludwig Laboratory for Cell Therapy. He previously was founding director of the Ludwig Lausanne Branch in Switzerland.
The Ludwig Laboratory for Cell Therapy will be housed within the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center. It will build on Dr. Coukos’s scientific achievements as director of Lausanne Branch, among them a bench-to-bedside research program for the development, production and clinical evaluation of cellular immunotherapies and cancer vaccines. For more details, please read Ludwig Cancer Research’s announcement.
Dr. Coukos joins Weill Cornell’s faculty as a professor of immunology in medicine with a secondary appointment in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. In addition to leading the laboratory, he will serve as associate director for cell therapy at the Meyer Cancer Center, where he will oversee a multidisciplinary team to develop next-generation T cell therapies and analyze their clinical translation.
“George is one of the world’s foremost experts in cell therapies, an area of science that holds enormous promise for cancer treatment and care,” said Dr. Jedd Wolchok, the Meyer Director of the Meyer Cancer Center and co-director of the Ludwig Collaborative Laboratory at Weill Cornell. “His recruitment to our institution lands us in rarified air for cutting-edge cell therapy.”
“Dr. Coukos is a pioneer in tumor immunology whose insights into the ways in which we can harness the immune system to fight malignancies have made meaningful advances in the treatment of melanoma and ovarian cancer,” said Dr. Massimo Loda, chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. “His deep wealth of scientific knowledge will be invaluable in our efforts to expand the promise of this treatment strategy to other tumor types.”
He will also serve as associate director for precision cell immunotherapy at the Englander for Precision Medicine, exploring the systems biology underpinning tumor growth and developing highly tailored cellular immunotherapies, especially T cell therapies.
“Dr. Coukos will marshal the Englander Institute’s platforms and expertise in tumor organoids, systems biology and artificial intelligence to develop and optimize cellular immunotherapies,” said Dr. Olivier Elemento, director of the Englander Institute. “We look forward to him joining our team.”
Dr. Coukos earned his medical degree in 1987 from the University of Modena School of Medicine in Italy, and his doctorate in reproductive biology in 1990 from the University of Patras School of Medicine in Greece. After completing a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the Hospital of the University of Modena, he relocated to the United States, where he completed postdoctoral research fellowships in reproductive cell biology and oncolytic viral-gene therapy, as well as another residency in obstetrics and gynecology, at University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. He joined the faculty in 2000 as an assistant professor in the Division of Gynecologic Oncology, eventually holding the Celso Ramon Garcia Professorship until 2012, when he joined the University of Lausanne in Switzerland as a full professor. He became a full member of Ludwig Cancer Research in 2015.
END
Renowned cell therapy expert establishes new laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine
2026-02-02
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