Scott Antonia

Scott Antonia, MD, PhD, joined the Duke Cancer Institute in 2019, where he directs the DCI Center for Cancer Immunotherapy, and is a member of the Thoracic Oncology disease group as Professor of Medical Oncology.

After completing his medical oncology training and post-doctoral fellowship in the Flavell Lab at the Yale University School of Medicine, he joined H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in 1994. There, he served as chairman of the Department of Thoracic Oncology.

Antonia is recognized as a global leader in the development of immunotherapy for lung cancer. He served as the global principal investigator for the practice-changing Pacific study, which established, as the new global standard of care, anti-PDL1 as consolidative therapy after combined chemo-radiation therapy for locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer. He was also the lead investigator of trials that established the clinical activity of immunotherapy for small cell lung cancer.

For the past 27 years, Antonia has directed a translational research program that’s overall goal is to develop immunotherapeutic strategies for the treatment of cancer patients; using tumor vaccines or adoptive T cell therapies in combination with immunomodulatory strategies designed to thwart the immunosuppressive mechanisms used by tumors to evade T cell mediated rejection. He has extensive experience in conducting early-phase clinical trials testing therapeutic tumor vaccines, adoptive T cell therapies and immunomodulatory antibodies.