Research Summary

Lawrence Fong, MD, is the Efim Guzik Distinguished Professor in Cancer Biology and leads the Cancer Immunotherapy Program at UCSF. He also co-directs the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at UCSF and co-leads the Cancer Immunology Program in the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a physician-scientist in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology directing both a translational research program and a research lab. He has focused on cancer immunotherapy for over 20 years and has been involved in both pre-clinical and clinical studies of FDA-approved immunotherapies including sipuleucel-T and immune checkpoint inhibitors. Dr. Fong's research focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie clinical response and resistance to immunotherapies. This work includes tracking antigen-specific T cell responses in treated cancer patients and developing biomarkers that are associated with clinical outcomes. The Cancer Immunotherapy Program that he directs performs early phase and high risk clinical trials across different disease indications. This program also includes a translational laboratory that performs mechanistic studies on samples derived from patients undergoing treatment.

Research Funding

  • September 23, 2019 - August 31, 2024 - Mechanisms of Exosome Driven Immunoregulation of Cancer Progression, Co-Principal Investigator. Sponsor: NIH/NCI, Sponsor Award ID: U01CA244452
  • September 19, 2018 - August 31, 2023 - Molecular and immune drivers of immunotherapy responsiveness in prostate cancer, Co-Principal Investigator. Sponsor: NIH/NCI, Sponsor Award ID: U01CA233100
  • January 16, 2018 - December 31, 2022 - Determinants of prostate cancer sensitivity to PD-1 blockade, Principal Investigator. Sponsor: NIH/NCI, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA223484
  • July 2, 2015 - June 30, 2020 - Immunotherapy of human bladder cancer, Principal Investigator. Sponsor: NIH/NCI, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA194511

Education

Columbia University, New York, NY, BA, 1984-1988, Pre-Med., Economics
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, MD, 1988-1992

Honors & Awards

  • 1990
    Stanford Alumni Medical Scholar
  • 1993
    Alpha Omega Alpha
  • 1997
    American Society of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award
  • 1997
    American Cancer Society Post-Doctoral Fellowship Award
  • 1997
    American Association for Cancer Research AFLAC Award
  • 2002
    American Association for Cancer Research Scholar-in-Training Award
  • 2003
    V Foundation Scholar

Selected Publications

  1. Oh DY, Fong L. Cytotoxic CD4+ T cells in cancer: Expanding the immune effector toolbox. Immunity. 2021 Dec 14; 54(12):2701-2711.  View on PubMed
  2. Oh DY, Fong L, Newell EW, Turk MJ, Chi H, Chang HY, Satpathy AT, Fairfax B, Silva-Santos B, Lantz O. Toward a better understanding of T cells in cancer. Cancer Cell. 2021 12 13; 39(12):1549-1552.  View on PubMed
  3. Zhao N, Bardine C, Lourenço AL, Wang YH, Huang Y, Cleary SJ, Wilson DM, Oh DY, Fong L, Looney MR, Evans MJ, Craik CS. In Vivo Measurement of Granzyme Proteolysis from Activated Immune Cells with PET. ACS Cent Sci. 2021 Oct 27; 7(10):1638-1649.  View on PubMed
  4. Pachynski RK, Morishima C, Szmulewitz R, Harshman L, Appleman L, Monk P, Bitting RL, Kucuk O, Millard F, Seigne JD, Fling SP, Maecker HT, Duault C, Ramchurren N, Hess B, D'Amico L, Lacroix A, Kaiser JC, Morre M, Grégoire A, Cheever M, Yu EY, Fong L. IL-7 expands lymphocyte populations and enhances immune responses to sipuleucel-T in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). J Immunother Cancer. 2021 Aug; 9(8).  View on PubMed
  5. Pollock Y, Zhang L, Kenfield SA, Van Blarigan EL, Rodvelt T, Rabow M, Macaire G, Weinberg R, Topp K, Friedlander T, Lin A, Fong L, Kim W, Ma B, Hough J, Lee M, Paciorek A, Ryan CJ, Chan JM, Small E, Aggarwal R. A multidisciplinary team-based approach with lifestyle modification and symptom management to address the impact of androgen deprivation therapy in prostate cancer: A randomized phase II study. Urol Oncol. 2021 Oct; 39(10):730.e9-730.e15.  View on PubMed
  6. Drake CG, Pachynski RK, Subudhi SK, McNeel DG, Antonarakis ES, Bauer TM, Lauer P, Brockstedt D, Patricia D, Wade M, Zudaire E, Bandyopadhyay N, Parasrampuria DA, Girgis S, Mason GE, Knoblauch RE, Stone N, Infante JR, Gottardis MM, Fong L. Safety and preliminary immunogenicity of JNJ-64041809, a live-attenuated, double-deleted Listeria monocytogenes-based immunotherapy, in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis. 2021 Jul 13.  View on PubMed
  7. Fong L, Morris MJ, Sartor O, Higano CS, Pagliaro L, Alva A, Appleman LJ, Tan W, Vaishampayan U, Porcu R, Tayama D, Kadel EE, Yuen KC, Datye A, Armstrong AJ, Petrylak DP. A Phase Ib Study of Atezolizumab with Radium-223 Dichloride in Men with Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer. Clin Cancer Res. 2021 Sep 01; 27(17):4746-4756.  View on PubMed
  8. Dang K, Castello G, Clarke SC, Li Y, Balasubramani A, Boudreau A, Davison L, Harris KE, Pham D, Sankaran P, Ugamraj HS, Deng R, Kwek S, Starzinski A, Iyer S, van Schooten W, Schellenberger U, Sun W, Trinklein ND, Buelow R, Buelow B, Fong L, Dalvi P. Attenuating CD3 affinity in a PSMAxCD3 bispecific antibody enables killing of prostate tumor cells with reduced cytokine release. J Immunother Cancer. 2021 Jun; 9(6).  View on PubMed
  9. Simonds EF, Lu ED, Badillo O, Karimi S, Liu EV, Tamaki W, Rancan C, Downey KM, Stultz J, Sinha M, McHenry LK, Nasholm NM, Chuntova P, Sundström A, Genoud V, Shahani SA, Wang LD, Brown CE, Walker PR, Swartling FJ, Fong L, Okada H, Weiss WA, Hellström M. Deep immune profiling reveals targetable mechanisms of immune evasion in immune checkpoint inhibitor-refractory glioblastoma. J Immunother Cancer. 2021 Jun; 9(6).  View on PubMed
  10. Sinha M, Zhang L, Subudhi S, Chen B, Marquez J, Liu EV, Allaire K, Cheung A, Ng S, Nguyen C, Friedlander TW, Aggarwal R, Spitzer M, Allison JP, Small EJ, Sharma P, Fong L. Pre-existing immune status associated with response to combination of sipuleucel-T and ipilimumab in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. J Immunother Cancer. 2021 05; 9(5).  View on PubMed
  11. de Kouchkovsky I, Zhang L, Philip EJ, Wright F, Kim DM, Natesan D, Kwon D, Ho H, Ho S, Chan E, Porten SP, Wong AC, Desai A, Huang FW, Chou J, Oh DY, Pruthi RS, Fong L, Small EJ, Friedlander TW, Koshkin VS. TERT promoter mutations and other prognostic factors in patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma treated with an immune checkpoint inhibitor. J Immunother Cancer. 2021 05; 9(5).  View on PubMed
  12. Wustrack RL, Shao E, Sheridan J, Zimel M, Cho SJ, Horvai AE, Luong D, Kwek SS, Fong L, Okimoto RA. Tumor morphology and location associate with immune cell composition in pleomorphic sarcoma. Cancer Immunol Immunother. 2021 Oct; 70(10):3031-3040.  View on PubMed
  13. Stultz J, Fong L. How to turn up the heat on the cold immune microenvironment of metastatic prostate cancer. Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis. 2021 09; 24(3):697-717.  View on PubMed
  14. Zhang L, Cham J, Cooley J, He T, Hagihara K, Yang H, Fan F, Cheung A, Thompson D, Kerns BJ, Fong L. Cross-platform comparison of immune-related gene expression to assess intratumor immune responses following cancer immunotherapy. J Immunol Methods. 2021 07; 494:113041.  View on PubMed
  15. Powles T, Atkins MB, Escudier B, Motzer RJ, Rini BI, Fong L, Joseph RW, Pal SK, Sznol M, Hainsworth J, Stadler WM, Hutson TE, Ravaud A, Bracarda S, Suarez C, Choueiri TK, Reeves J, Cohn A, Ding B, Leng N, Hashimoto K, Huseni M, Schiff C, McDermott DF. Efficacy and Safety of Atezolizumab Plus Bevacizumab Following Disease Progression on Atezolizumab or Sunitinib Monotherapy in Patients with Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma in IMmotion150: A Randomized Phase 2 Clinical Trial. Eur Urol. 2021 05; 79(5):665-673.  View on PubMed
  16. He MX, Cuoco MS, Crowdis J, Bosma-Moody A, Zhang Z, Bi K, Kanodia A, Su MJ, Ku SY, Garcia MM, Sweet AR, Rodman C, DelloStritto L, Silver R, Steinharter J, Shah P, Izar B, Walk NC, Burke KP, Bakouny Z, Tewari AK, Liu D, Camp SY, Vokes NI, Salari K, Park J, Vigneau S, Fong L, Russo JW, Yuan X, Balk SP, Beltran H, Rozenblatt-Rosen O, Regev A, Rotem A, Taplin ME, Van Allen EM. Transcriptional mediators of treatment resistance in lethal prostate cancer. Nat Med. 2021 03; 27(3):426-433.  View on PubMed
  17. Chandrasekharan P, Fung KLB, Zhou XY, Cui W, Colson C, Mai D, Jeffris K, Huynh Q, Saayujya C, Kabuli L, Fellows B, Lu Y, Yu E, Tay ZW, Zheng B, Fong L, Conolly SM. Non-radioactive and sensitive tracking of neutrophils towards inflammation using antibody functionalized magnetic particle imaging tracers. Nanotheranostics. 2021; 5(2):240-255.  View on PubMed
  18. Levy ES, Chang R, Zamecnik CR, Dhariwala MO, Fong L, Desai TA. Multi-Immune Agonist Nanoparticle Therapy Stimulates Type I Interferons to Activate Antigen-Presenting Cells and Induce Antigen-Specific Antitumor Immunity. Mol Pharm. 2021 03 01; 18(3):1014-1025.  View on PubMed
  19. Tempero M, Oh DY, Tabernero J, Reni M, Van Cutsem E, Hendifar A, Waldschmidt DT, Starling N, Bachet JB, Chang HM, Maurel J, Garcia-Carbonero R, Lonardi S, Coussens LM, Fong L, Tsao LC, Cole G, James D, Macarulla T. Ibrutinib in combination with nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine for first-line treatment of patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma: phase III RESOLVE study. Ann Oncol. 2021 05; 32(5):600-608.  View on PubMed
  20. Luke JJ, Barlesi F, Chung K, Tolcher AW, Kelly K, Hollebecque A, Le Tourneau C, Subbiah V, Tsai F, Kao S, Cassier PA, Khasraw M, Kindler HL, Fang H, Fan F, Allaire K, Patel M, Ye S, Chao DT, Henner WR, Hayflick JS, McDevitt MA, Fong L. Phase I study of ABBV-428, a mesothelin-CD40 bispecific, in patients with advanced solid tumors. J Immunother Cancer. 2021 02; 9(2).  View on PubMed

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