Nicholas P. Restifo Explained

Nicholas P. Restifo
Birth Date:24 July 1960
Birth Place:Columbus, Ohio
Nationality:American
Occupation:Immunologist
Known For:T cell-based immunotherapy
Education:Johns Hopkins University,
New York University School of Medicine

Nicholas P. Restifo (born July 24, 1960) is an American immunologist, physician and educator in cancer immunotherapy. Until July 2019, he was a tenured senior investigator in the intramural National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Maryland.[1] Nicholas was an executive vice president of research at Lyell based in San Francisco.

Restifo has been a pioneer in the use of T cell-based immunotherapy.

Early life and education

Restifo was born July 24, 1960, in Columbus, Ohio. He grew up in a small town, Amherst, Ohio, and went to high school in Lorain, Ohio. He completed his undergraduate education with honors at the Johns Hopkins University and obtained his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine. He first joined the National Cancer Institute, NIH in Bethesda, Maryland in 1989. He was recruited from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he worked in the laboratory of Murray Brennan, the former chairman of Surgery. He became a principal investigator[2] in 1993 and has authored or co-authored more than 350 papers and book chapters on cancer immunotherapy. His h-index is 156 and his work has been cited more than 104,000 times according to Google Scholar.[3]

Research

Restifo is a pioneer in the field of cancer immunotherapy with a focus on the use of T cells in the treatment of malignancy.[4] One of Dr. Restifo's major discoveries is that CD8+ T cells experience a stereotypical maturational program.[5] His early work was focused on discovering how tumor cells can escape from T cell recognition.[6] [7] He went on to characterize the mechanisms underlying why T cells survive and expand better after lymphodepletion.[8] His most recent efforts include a focus on how elements – literally from the periodic table – influence cancer immunity. These include work on how oxygen can inhibit anti-tumor immunity [9] and how potassium ions from dying cancer cells can shut down the anti-tumor response.[10]

Successful treatment of patients with cancer is the goal of his laboratory, and his therapeutic approaches employ adoptive T cell transfer, gene modification and cellular reprogramming.[11] Basic aspects of tumor and T cell immunology inform novel therapeutic interventions in the clinic.

Restifo and his research team have made contributions to the fields of adoptive cell transfer[11] tumor immune-escape,[12] [13] virally encoded cancer vaccines,[14] adoptive cell transfer for the treatment of cancer, and the biology of self/tumor-reactive T cells, with an emphasis on memory CD8+ T cells.[15]

Awards

Solomon A. Berson Prize for Clinical and Translational Science, 2017 Clarivate Analytics, “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” Double Citation in Immunology and Clinical Medicine 2014 (Thomson Reuters) NIH Director’s Award, 2017, Federal Technology Transfer Award, 2017 Primary Organizer of four Keystone Symposia and three International Cancer Immunotherapy Meetings at NIH. Plenary and Keynote Invited talks at AACR, SITC, ASH, ASCGT, AAI and other meetings.

Academic Appointments, primary mentor for PhD students: 2014 Cambridge University, UK; 2011 U of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; 2010 Georgetown U School of Medicine; 2009 George Wash U School of Medicine.

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Nicholas P. Restifo, M.D. . . September 12, 2009 . April 14, 2010 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100324173620/http://ccr.cancer.gov/staff/staff.asp?profileid=5762 . March 24, 2010 .
  2. Web site: Nicholas P. Restifo, M.D. Center for Cancer Research . ccr.cancer.gov . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150912105954/https://ccr.cancer.gov/Surgery-Branch/nicholas-p-restifo?qt-staff_profile_tabs=3 . 2015-09-12.
  3. Web site: Nicholas P Restifo, MD .
  4. 10.1126/science.aaa4967 . Adoptive cell transfer as personalized immunotherapy for human cancer . 2015 . Rosenberg . Steven A. . Restifo . Nicholas P. . Science . 348 . 6230 . 62–68 . 25838374 . 6295668 . 2015Sci...348...62R .
  5. Gattinoni, L., Lugli, E., Ji, Y. et al. A human memory T cell subset with stem cell–like properties. Nat Med 17, 1290–1297 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2446
  6. Nicholas P. Restifo, Francesco M. Marincola, Yutaka Kawakami, Jeff Taubenberger, John R. Yannelli, Steven A. Rosenberg, Loss of Functional Beta 2 -Microglobulin in Metastatic Melanomas From Five Patients Receiving Immunotherapy, JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 88, Issue 2, 17 January 1996, Pages 100–108, https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/88.2.100
  7. https://rupress.org/jem/article-pdf/177/2/265/1103403/265.pdf Identification of Human Cancers Deficient in Antigen Processing
  8. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.it.2004.12.003
  9. Clever, D, Et Al . Oxygen Sensing by T Cells Establishes an Immunologically Tolerant Metastatic Niche . Cell . Aug 25, 2016 . 166 . 5 . 1117–1131 . 10.1016/j.cell.2016.07.032 . 27565342. 5548538 .
  10. Eil, R, et al. Ionic immune suppression within the tumour microenvironment limits T cell effector function. Nature. 2016 Sep 14. doi: 10.1038/nature19364. [Epub ahead of print]
  11. Restifo NP, Dudley ME, Rosenberg SA . Adoptive immunotherapy for cancer: harnessing the T cell response . Nature Reviews Immunology . 12 . 4 . March 2012 . 269–81 . 10.1038/nri3191 . 22437939. 6292222 .
  12. Restifo NP, Esquivel F, Kawakami Y, etal . Identification of human cancers deficient in antigen processing . The Journal of Experimental Medicine . 177 . 2 . 265–72 . February 1993 . 8426105 . 1950463 . 10.1084/jem.177.2.265.
  13. Khong HT, Restifo NP . Natural selection of tumor variants in the generation of "tumor escape" phenotypes . Nature Immunology . 3 . 11 . 999–1005 . November 2002 . 12407407 . 1508168 . 10.1038/ni1102-999.
  14. Irvine KR, McCabe BJ, Rosenberg SA, Restifo NP . Synthetic Oligonucleotide Expressed by a Recombinant Vaccinia Virus Elicits Therapeutic CTL . Journal of Immunology . 154 . 9 . 4651–7 . May 1995 . 10.4049/jimmunol.154.9.4651 . 7722317 . 1976247 .
  15. Wnt signaling arrests effector T cell differentiation and generates CD8+ memory stem cells. Luca. Gattinoni. Xiao-Song. Zhong. Douglas C.. Palmer. Yun. Ji. Christian S.. Hinrichs. Zhiya. Yu. Claudia. Wrzesinski. Andrea. Boni. Lydie. Cassard. Lindsay M.. Garvin. Chrystal M.. Paulos. Pawel. Muranski. Nicholas P.. Restifo. July 29, 2009. Nature Medicine. 15. 7. 808–813. 10.1038/nm.1982. 19525962. 2707501.