Professor, Laboratory of Cellular Immunology
La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology
Director of Translational Science, San Diego Center for Cancer
Immunotherapy
Head of Cancer Vaccines, Human Longevity, Inc
Dr. Schoenberger is a Professor in the Laboratory of Cellular Immunology and Co-Director of the San Diego Center for Personalized Cancer Immunotherapy, as well as Adjunct Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center. He received his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from UCLA in 1993 and completed postdoctoral training in Immunohematology and Tumor Immunology at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands. Dr. Schoenberger was appointed to LIAI’s faculty in 1998 as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to
Associate Professor in 2002, gained Tenure in 2005, and became a Professor in 2007. He is a recipient of Scholar Awards from both the American Cancer Society and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and is on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
Dr. Schoenberger is a leader in understanding the immunobiology of CD4 + and CD8 + Tcell responses with particular expertise on the generation and maintenance of immune memory by these subsets and in the key role of antigen-presenting cells (APC) in mediating antigen-specific tolerance versus immunity. His research has revealed a new mechanism for how CD4 + T cells provide the ‘help’ necessary for optimal CD8 + T cell responses via APC activation and his laboratory was the first to demonstrate the role of T cell programming in guiding the development of CD8 + T cells. More recently, he has
sought to translate his laboratory’s insights into T cell and APC biology for the personalized immunotherapy of cancer. He and his team have developed a range of novel tools and approaches for the identification of personalized tumor neoantigen targets for immunotherapeutic intervention in solid cancers including personalized cancer vaccines and adoptive cellular therapy. Clinical trials based on applying these discoveries are scheduled to begin at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center in 2018.