Chris Klebanoff

Chris Klebanoff is an assistant member, the Center for Cell Engineering, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and a member investigator, at The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. Dr. Klebanoff is a cellular immunologist and medical oncologist with 17 years of experience in the pre-clinical and clinical development of T cell-based immunotherapies for the treatment of solid and hematologic cancers. Prior to joining Memorial Sloan Kettering, he was an assistant clinical investigator and an NIH-Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholar at the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. As a member of the NCI Surgery Branch’s senior staff, he participated in the early phase clinical development of numerous T cell-based therapies which would later be licensed to commercial entities. These include the anti-CD19 28-zeta CAR that would become Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel), gene-engineered TCR therapies targeting NY-ESO-1, MAGE-A3/6, and HPV E6, and neoantigen selected TIL therapies for a diverse range of solid cancers. Dr. Klebanoff’s laboratory investigations have contributed to the mechanistic understanding of how lymphodepletion enhances adoptive immunotherapies and how T cell differentiation status influences cellular persistence and clinical outcomes.