Discoveries
Parker Institute is a unified force of the world’s top immunotherapy researchers, working in tandem towards a common goal: curing cancer. Parker’s long-term funding relationships free scientists to do their work without interruption, so they can focus on fulfilling cancer immunotherapy’s promise. This expedites cutting-edge science without compromising scientific rigor — and gets life-saving treatments on a faster path to patients.
Parker Institute partners with top academic centers to support leading-edge research, including the long-shot ideas most funders shy away from. Instead of focusing on funding basic science, we back projects that aim to unlock new, patient-ready cancer immunotherapy treatments for more types of cancer. In other words: therapies that can help more people, more quickly.
Lacey J. Padrón, Deena M. Maurer, Mark H. O'Hara, Eileen M. O'Reilly, Robert A. Wolff, Zev A. Wainberg, Andrew H. Ko, George Fisher, Osama Rahma, Jaclyn P. Lyman, Christopher R. Cabanski, Jia Xin Yu, Shannon M. Pfeiffer, Marko Spasic, Jingying Xu, Pier Federico Gherardini, Joyson Karakunnel, Rosemarie Mick, Cécile Alanio, Katelyn T. Byrne, Travis J. Hollmann, Jonni S. Moore, Derek D. Jones, Marco Tognetti, Richard O. Chen, Xiaodong Yang, Lisa Salvador, E. John Wherry, Ute Dugan, Jill O'Donnell-Tormey, Lisa H. Butterfield, Vanessa M. Hubbard-Lucey, Ramy Ibrahim, Justin Fairchild, Samantha Bucktrout, Theresa M. LaVallee, Robert H. Vonderheide
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, The University of Pennsylvania, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, San Francisco, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, Apexigen, Inc., Biognosys AG, Bristol Myers Squibb, Cancer Research Institute, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, Institute for Immunology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Parker, Personalis, Inc, University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, Stanford University, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of California,
Weill Cornell Medicine
David Y. Oh, Serena S. Kwek, Siddharth S. Raju, Tony Li, Elizabeth McCarthy, Eric Chow, Dvir Aran, Arielle Ilano, Chien-Chun Steven Pai, Chiara Rancan, Kathryn Allaire, Arun Burra, Yang Sun, Matthew H. Spitzer, Serghei Mangul, Sima Porten, Maxwell V. Meng, Terence W. Friedlander, Chun Jimmie Ye, Lawrence Fong
University of California, San Francisco
Immunotherapy is changing what's possible in cancer treatment — harnessing the body's own defenses to fight disease in ways traditional therapies never could. A decade in, the breakthroughs are just beginning.
Our President of Research, Ira Mellman, is a pioneering force in cancer immunology. His decades of experience in top labs taught him what researchers need, and what they don’t. That’s why our science team doesn’t believe in prescriptive roadmaps. Instead, we define the frontiers and breakthroughs with the most potential and create the conditions for researchers to explore them freely. In 2026, we recalibrated our scientific priorities based on a decade’s worth of progress — and what we now see as the most promising pathways to a world without cancer.
Cell therapy has transformed treatment for blood cancers. Solid tumors are a different challenge: harder to reach, and harder to target. We're committed to making cell therapy work for them too.
Learn moreWhat if you didn’t need to remove a patient’s cells to engineer them? In vivo engineering delivers genetic instructions directly into the body, reprogramming immune cells where they already are: no extraction, no cell manufacturing, no waiting.
Learn moreEvery cancer carries a unique set of mutations — and those mutations can become targets. At Parker Institute and beyond, investigators are working to develop engineered T cell therapies that teach the immune system to recognize and attack a tumor’s distinct genetic fingerprint.
Learn moreA therapeutic vaccine doesn’t prevent disease. It treats it. Built from a tumor’s own mutations, these cancer vaccines work inside the body to teach the immune system what to attack. After decades of dead ends, this game-changing approach is starting to offer a path to protection that lasts.
Learn moreCell therapy has transformed treatment for blood cancers. Solid tumors are a different challenge: harder to reach, and harder to target. We're committed to making cell therapy work for them too.
Learn moreAt Parker Institute, we’re rewiring how research is done. Academia has long been competitive, and protective of ideas. But when the goal is curing cancer, anything that slows progress doesn't make sense. We’ve built something different: a network of world-leading institutions that share, challenge, and build on each other's work. Because that’s how we end cancer.
In recent years, we’ve expanded our network to include additional scientists from several more leading institutions. Together, we’re pushing cancer immunotherapy research farther and faster.
We are looking for bold collaborators and brilliant research minds to join our network. Contact us to learn more.
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