George Coukos

George Coukos is the Director of the Department of Oncology at the University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Ludwig Cancer Research Lausanne Branch.

He has been interested over the past 20 years in elucidating fundamental mechanisms in the tumor microenvironment (TME) that determine the fate of antitumor immunity, especially mechanisms underlying the deregulation of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), with a translational focus largely concentrated on ovarian cancer during his tenure at Penn. Following his arrival in Lausanne, he has extended his research program to include other solid tumor types, testing ideas stemming from ovarian cancer investigation.

In Lausanne, he established a state of the art group in T cell discovery, systems T cell engineering, and therapy development, aiming at identifying adoptive therapy solutions overcoming TME barriers, especially pursuing T cell engineering approaches addressing mechanisms of immune resistance in tumors.

His most current research efforts focus on (a) identifying T cells recognizing tumor-specific neoantigens and leveraging them for therapy, and (b) systems biology and systems engineering of neoantigen specific T cells, as a means to overcome the deregulation of T cells in the TME, and thus develop curative individualized T cell therapies for solid tumors, with the ultimate goal of translating basic discoveries to the clinic.