Lawrence Fong, MD’s research has focused on immunotherapy for more than 30 years. For many of those years, the new scientific director of the Immunotherapy Integrated Research Center at Fred Hutch Cancer Center considered immunotherapy — the practice of harnessing the body’s own immune system to fight cancer and other diseases — an idea whose time had not yet come.
Fong, who previously founded and led the University of California, San Francisco’s Cancer Immunotherapy Program, assumed his new role July 1. When he started his career, he was told by some mentors that immunotherapy was “a great lab experiment but it wasn’t something that would change clinical practice.” He now feels vindicated for having stayed the course.
Fong replaces Geoffrey Hill, MD, FRACP, FRCPA, who is senior vice president and director of Fred Hutch’s Translational Science and Therapeutics Division, where Fong is a full professor. Fong, the Bezos Family Distinguished Scholar in Immunotherapy, also has an appointment in the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutch and serves as a professor in the University of Washington Department of Medicine.
