Siwen Hu-Lieskovan, PhD, MD

Dr. Siwen Hu-Lieskovan is an Associate Professor of Medicine, and Director of Solid Tumor Immunotherapy at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah. She is a recent recruit from UCLA, where she received her Hematology/Oncology Fellowship training and held a faculty position under the mentorship of Dr. Antoni Ribas. She is a board-certified oncologist with clinical focus on melanoma and early phase testing of cancer immunotherapies in solid tumors. She is experienced with protocol development and conduct of immunotherapy-based clinical trials, and has been a principal investigator of industry-, investigator- and cooperative group-initiated clinical trials testing immune checkpoint inhibitors, oncolytic viruses, cancer vaccines and other immune-modulatory agents, as well as cell therapy with genetically modified T cells and hematopoietic stem cells. Dr. Hu-Lieskovan chairs the SWOG Immunotherapeutics Committee, and is a study chair and translational lead of several cross-NCTN protocols initiated by SWOG, including the immunoMATCH trial. She is also a consultant on cancer immunotherapy drug development strategies for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.

Dr. Hu-Lieskovan is a physician scientist with research focus on characterization of tumor immune microenvironment, development of biomarkers to predict response and resistance to immunotherapies, and combination strategies to overcome immune resistance, by studying patient-derived clinical samples and immune-competent (syngeneic) animal models. In the past, she and her research teams made contributions in understanding the role of driver mutations in oncogenesis and immune evasion, mechanisms of response and resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors, and developing novel drug delivery systems. She led the first studies showing efficacy of nanoparticle delivered siRNA targeting oncogenes in treating metastatic cancers, and synergistic effect of combining BRAF and MEK inhibitors with immunotherapy in BRAF mutant melanoma. She has authored/co-authored research articles, reviews, editorials and book chapters in peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Science Translational Medicine, Cell, New England Journal of Medicine, etc. She is a recipient of the prestigious National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award (CCITLA), American Society of Clinical Oncologist (ASCO) Young Investigator Award (YIA) and Career Development Award, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Sharp Award, the Hope Foundation Dr. Coltman Award, the Melanoma Research Alliance YIA and Team Science Award, the Tower Research Foundation Award, the UCLA KL2 Translational Award, the Daniel Von Hoff Innovative Protocol Award, among others. Siwen is a member of the NCI Investigational Drug Steering Committee (IDSC) Immunotherapy Task Force, Society of ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (SITC) Biomarker Taskforce, ASCO, and AACR. She was an associate director of the UCLA Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy supervising biobanking and translational studies. She currently serves as co-Chair of the SITC Biomarker Taskforce Resources and Useful Tool Subcommittee, and Leader of the ASCO annual meeting Education Committee Developmental Therapeutics Immunotherapy Track.