Scientific Areas of Expertise: Adaptive Immunity; Cancer Immunology; Cancer Immunotherapy
For vast contributions to characterizing antitumor immunity, defining how immune cells identify and target tumor-specific neoantigens, and for pioneering technologies that allow for high-throughput analysis of immune cell reactivity to cancer neoantigens, which have effectively transformed clinical approaches to precision immunotherapeutic treatment strategies.
A globally renowned scientist, Dr. Schumacher is celebrated for his groundbreaking contributions to characterizing antitumor immunity. Dr. Schumacher’s research investigations provided the first evidence that immune checkpoint blockade can augment the capacity of the T cell-based immune system to recognize neoantigens, cancer antigens that arise from tumor DNA mutations. Strikingly, these observations further revealed that T cell-based cancer immunotherapies exhibit the most profound activity in cancers that present with large amounts of DNA damage and mutational load, providing independent evidence for the role of cancer neoantigens in human tumor control and subsequently spearheading the development of neoantigen-targeted cancer therapies.
Through the development of novel assays and pioneering of high-throughput technologies for the analysis of antigen reactivity of both cytotoxic (CD8) and helper (CD4) T cells, Dr. Schumacher’s team has elucidated with unprecedented depth, the antigens that are recognized by tumor infiltrating T cells. Concordantly, Dr. Schumacher has demonstrated that T cells in certain malignancies, such as melanoma and lung cancer, frequently respond to neoantigens, irrevocably defining how immune cells identify and target human cancers. Next to his work highlighting T cell activity in human cancer, Dr. Schumacher’s work provided the first evidence for the superior immune activating capacity of neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade, in which immunotherapy is initiated prior to surgical intervention. This work inspired the development of neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade for a series of human malignancies. Dr. Schumacher’s ongoing research involves transforming clinical approaches to precision immunotherapy by pursuing technology-based approaches by which to further dissect immune function and selectively boost neoantigen-specific T cell reactivity.
Selected Awards and Honors
2021 AACR-CRI Lloyd J. Old Award in Cancer Immunology, American Association for Cancer Research, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2021 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Translational Medicine, Louis-Jeantet Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland
2021 Elected Member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2020 Stevin Prize, Dutch Research Council, The Hague, Netherlands
2016 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology, Cancer Research Institute, New York, New York
2016 Peter Speiser Award, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
2016 van Loghem Award, Dutch Society for Immunology, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2015 Meyenburg Cancer Research Award, Meyenburg Foundation, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany
2014 Fondazione San Salvatore Award, Fondazione San Salvatore for Cancer Research, Lugano, Switzerland
2014 Queen Wilhelmina Cancer Research Prize, Dutch Cancer Society, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2014 Elected Fellow, European Academy of Cancer Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden
2012 Member, Stand Up to Cancer, Cancer Immunotherapy Dream Team, Los Angeles, California
2010 Elected Member, European Molecular Biology Organization, Heidelberg, Germany
1994 Fellow, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Life Sciences Research Foundation, Cockeysville, Maryland