Lewis Lanier

Dr. Lanier is Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Co-Leader of the Cancer, Immunity, and Microenvironment Program, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of California San Francisco.

Dr. Lanier received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina and was a Damon Runyon – Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fellow at the University of New Mexico. He went on to hold leadership roles at the Becton Dickinson Monoclonal Center and at the DNAX Research Institute prior to joining the UCSF faculty.

Dr. Lanier is a recognized expert on natural killer (NK) cell biology, making seminal contributions to the understanding of NK cell recognition and targeting of virus-infected tissue. He has discovered and characterized multiple activating and inhibiting NK receptors, and demonstrated their interaction with cancer cells. For his contributions, he received the 2002 William B. Coley Award and earned membership in the National Academy of Sciences. He continues to explore the mechanisms that enable NK cells to distinguish between healthy cells and infected or cancerous cells.