Christopher A. Klebanoff MD

Dr. Christopher A. Klebanoff is a cellular immunologist and medical oncologist with over 20 years of experience in the pre-clinical and early-stage clinical development of T cell-based immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. Prior to joining Memorial Sloan Kettering and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in 2016, he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholar and Assistant Clinical Investigator at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Dr. Klebanoff pioneered the paradigm that T cell subsets with memory-like attributes are a critical determinant for adoptive immunotherapy efficacy. Further, he resolved how host lymphodepletion – a standard practice for nearly all cellular immunotherapies – enhances the potency of adoptively transferred T cells through the removal of homeostatic cytokine “sinks.” The Klebanoff laboratory is currently focused on the discovery and immunologic targeting of shared neoantigens resulting from recurrently mutated driver genes using TCR gene therapy.

Clinically, Dr. Klebanoff has contributed to the successful early-phase development of numerous T cell-based therapies. These include an anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that would become FDA-approved, tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy for the treatment of melanoma (Lifileucel) and other common cancers, and TCR gene therapies targeting epitopes derived from NY-ESO-1 (Letetresgene), MAGE- A3, and HPV16. Dr. Klebanoff is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award and a National Institutes of Health MERIT Award.