Biography

Luca Gattinoni, M.D. holds the Chair for Functional Immune Cell Modulation at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He is currently the Director of the Division of Functional Immune Cell Modulation at the Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT). Dr. Gattinoni graduated from the University of Milan School of Medicine with distinction in 1998 and completed his residency in Medical Oncology at the National Cancer Institute of Milan (INT) in 2003. He received postdoctoral training in Cellular Immunotherapy and Tumor Immunology with Dr. Restifo at the Surgery Branch of the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI, NIH) from 2003-2008. He remained at the NCI until 2019 as Staff Scientist (2008-2013) and NIH Stadtman Investigator (2013-2019). His research focuses on the development of T cell-based immunotherapies for patients with advanced cancer. Dr. Gattinoni’s contributions to the field include the identification of human stem cell memory T cells (TSCM) and their use in clinical trials of adoptive immunotherapy. More recently, together with his research team, he has identified several transcription factors, epigenetic regulators, microRNAs, and metabolic checkpoints governing T cell stemness and TSCM formation that can be harnessed to potentiate T cell-based immunotherapies. Dr. Gattinoni has published more than 100 manuscripts and is the recipient of several prizes and honors including the 2004 SITC Presidential Award, the 2012 Wilson S. Stone Memorial Award, and the 2013 NCI Director’s Intramural Innovation Award.