Sacha Gnjatic, PhD

Dr. Sacha Gnjatic received his PhD in Immunology from the University of Paris VII after completing a fellowship at the Institut Cochin in Paris. Following a post-doctoral fellowship in Lloyd J. Old’s laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering (MSKCC) in New York, Dr. Gnjatic was appointed to the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at MSKCC, where he eventually became Associate Member, and was named Director of Immunological Monitoring at the Ludwig Center for Immunotherapy. In 2013, Dr. Gnjatic was appointed as Associate Professor of Medicine at the Tisch Cancer Institute and Precision Immunology Institute, as part of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. In 2022, he became a Professor of Oncological Sciences, Medicine, and Pathology. In addition, he serves as Associate Director of the Human Immune Monitoring Center at Mount Sinai. Dr. Gnjatic focuses on human immune responses to cancer in an antigen-specific manner, to define new targets for the development of cancer immunotherapies, ask how these immunotherapies work and why they may fail. Dr. Gnjatic’s work has established the immunological basis for testing human cancer vaccines and cancer immunotherapies in over 100 clinical trials. He is known best for immune monitoring of disease, i.e., applying various multiomic high-dimensional methodologies to correlate biological biomarkers with clinical events. Areas of research include: Characterization of serological and cellular immune responses against tumor antigens such as MAGE-A3 or NY-ESO-1, spontaneously occurring or induced by cancer immunotherapy, using state-of-the-art T cell methods and large-scale sermonic profiling; Mechanisms of antigen presentation to T cells, to evaluate viral, bacterial, and parasitic vectors, and cross-presentation of antigen to HLA; Impact of immunoregulation on tumor antigen-specific responses, from co-inhibitory molecules expressed on T cells at the tumor site to the effect of regulatory T cells and immune checkpoint blockade on anti-tumor effectors; Characterization of the tumor immune microenvironment to link immune infiltration and immunomodulatory markers in relation to tissue architecture, antigen expression, and resulting immune responses locally and in the periphery; COVID-19 cytokines, antibody and T cell responses and relation to severity and comorbidities; predictive biomarkers of gut inflammation. Dr. Gnjatic is the principal investigator in a number of consortia, supported by Cancer Moonshots and NIH grants such as U24, U01, P01, and contracts. His work has resulted in more than 215 publications in high-impact peer-reviewed journals and 10 patents.