Lorenzo Galluzzi, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Cell Biology in Radiation Oncology with the Department of Radiation Oncology of Weill Cornell Medical College.
Dr. Galluzzi is best known for major experimental and conceptual contributions to the fields of cell death, autophagy, tumor metabolism and tumor immunology. In particular, he provided profound insights into the links between adaptive stress responses in cancer cells and the activation of a clinically relevant tumor-targeting immune response in the context of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Lorenzo Galluzzi has published more than 500 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals.
The current interest of our team is to elucidate the links between cellular pathways of response to stress – including (but not limited to) autophagy, cellular senescence and multiple variants of regulated cell death – and the preservation of organismal homeostasis, with a particular focus on anticancer immunity. More specifically, we are interested in dissecting the complexity of the tumor microenvironment with respect to the mechanisms through which malignant as well as non-malignant components of the tumor exposed to chemotherapy, radiation therapy and immunotherapy emit danger signals that are involved in the initiation and perpetuation of robust immune responses. The detailed characterization of these molecular and cellular circuitries may identify stress-responsive mechanisms of adaptation in malignant or non-malignant cells as novel targets for the pharmacological manipulation of anticancer immune responses. Ultimately, these findings may translate into novel clinical studies based on combinatorial therapeutic regimens aimed at maximizing immunostimulation within the tumor microenvironment. Most recently, we have delineated a molecular mechanism whereby autophagy and apoptotic caspases inhibit the secretion of type I interferon by irradiated cancer cells, de facto limiting their ability to initiate therapeutically relevant anticancer immune responses