Ludwig Lausanne Director George Coukos received the 2021 ESMO Translational Research Award for his contributions to research on the immunology and treatment of ovarian cancer. George’s early research revealed the existence of infiltrating T cells in ovarian tumors and linked their presence to a lower severity of disease. That discovery, which he built upon in a recent publication (see page 6), indicated that some ovarian tumors might be responsive to immunotherapies under the right conditions. Since then, he has led efforts to devise personalized immunotherapies for ovarian cancer and other malignancies that have traditionally resisted such interventions. His laboratory has also made key contributions to our understanding of how tumors exploit regulatory T cells and myeloid cells of the immune system to suppress anti-cancer immune responses and advanced strategies to undo such resistance. His keynote lecture Mobilizing Immunity against cancer from bench to bedside was given on September 17th at ESMO 2021. Read an interview published in the ESMO Daily Reporter where George discusses his enduring passion for tumor immunology.
This article appeared in the February 2022 issue of Ludwig Link. Click here to download a PDF (1 MB).