Steven Rosenberg

Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg is the Chief of Surgery at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He pioneered the development of immunotherapy that has resulted in the first effective immunotherapies for selected patients with advanced cancer. Dr. Rosenberg also pioneered the development of gene therapy and was the first to successfully insert foreign genes into humans and to conduct clinical studies of the gene therapy of cancer. He received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins and his Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard. After his residency training at Brigham Hospital in Boston, he joined the National Cancer Institute as its Chief of Surgery at age 34, a position he continues to hold today. Dr. Rosenberg is credited with developing the use of IL-2 and immune cells for the treatment of patients with melanoma in a procedure termed adoptive cell transfer. He has shown that expanding immune cells in the lab can be used to treat patients with melanoma. The first published study in 2002, demonstrated that some patients with advanced melanoma could be treated to complete remission with a combination of chemotherapy, immune cells, and high doses of IL-2. The second study, published in 2006, demonstrated that the receptor of T cells can be transferred to immune cells and in combination with chemotherapy and high doses of IL-2 can be used to treat patients with melanoma. Dr. Rosenberg is the recipient of numerous awards, and is the author of eight books and more than 820 articles in the scientific literature covering various aspects of cancer research. He was the most cited clinician in the world in the field of oncology for the 17 years between 1981 and 1998. The Academy student delegates visited Dr. Steven Rosenberg at the National Cancer Institute during the 2007 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C., and he spoke to them about his latest trail-blazing cancer research and clinical treatments for melanoma.