Nir Hacohen, Ph.D.


Director
Center for Cancer Immunology, Massachusetts General Hospital
Investigator
Cancer Center, Mass General Research Institute
Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
MGH Research Scholar 2012-2017
Mass General Research Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital
Institute Member
Broad Institute
antigens neoplasm; cancer immunotherapy; dendritic cells; endodeoxyribonucleases; fms-like tyrosine kinase 3; host-pathogen interactions; immune system; immunity innate; immunogenetics; immunology; influenza a virus h1n1 subtype; interferon regulatory factor-7; lymphocyte subsets; rna small interfering; single-cell analysis; systems biology; toll-like receptors; viruses

The Hacohen lab consists of immunologists, geneticists, biochemists, technologists and computational biologists working together to develop new and unbiased strategies to understand basic immune processes and immune-mediated diseases, with an emphasis on the innate immune system and personal medicine.

We address three key questions in immunology:

(1) How are immune responses against cancer initiated, maintained and evaded?
(2) What are the immune circuits that sense and control pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria?
(3) How does immunity against the body develop, in particular, in patients with autoimmune lupus?

In addition to discovering and studying specific molecular and cellular mechanisms, we also address how and why the immune response (to tumors, pathogens or self) varies so dramatically across individuals. Finally, we are adapting our unbiased analytical strategies into real-world therapeutics, having initiated clinical trials (with our collaborator Dr. Catherine Wu) in which patients are vaccinated against their own tumors with a fully personal vaccine that is designed based on a computational analysis of their personal tumor genome.

Research lab website Publications
nhacohen@mgh.harvard.edu
6177243768

CNY-Building #149
149 13th Street
Charlestown, MA 02129