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Jeffrey Ishizuka, MD, DPhil

Assistant Professor
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About

Titles

Assistant Professor

Biography

Dr. Ishizuka is a medical oncologist who treats melanoma patients and Principal Investigator of the Ishizuka Lab. His laboratory studies the tumor-immune microenvironment and seeks to uncover novel approaches by which inflammation can be manipulated to improve cancer immunotherapies.

Appointments

Education & Training

Clinical Fellow / Post-doc
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Massachusetts General Hospital / Brigham and Women's Hospital (2019)
Resident
Brigham and Women's Hospital (2015)
MD
Harvard Medical School, Medicine (2013)
DPhil
Oxford University, Immunology (2008)
BA
Williams College, Chemistry

Research

Overview

We are work on novel strategies to manipulate the initiation and effects of inflammation within the tumor microenvironment in order to improve cancer immunotherapy. Areas of focus include the triggering of dsRNA sesning pathways to improve the recruitment and activation of anti-tumor immune cells, identification of novel drug targets for combination immunotherapy and the development of improved approaches to characterizing the tumor-immune microenvironment in patient samples. Our projects build off of our prior work demonstrating that targeting the innate checkpoints in tumors can trigger components of the anti-viral response and overcome resistance to immune checkpoint blockade. To achieve our aims, we utilize a wide variety of in vitro, in vivo and in silico techniques, with core competencies in basic and systems immunology, functional genomics, multimodal tumor microenvironment assessment and in vivo models of immunotherapy efficacy.

Anti-tumor immunity; Tumor environment; Anti-viral immunity

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Jeffrey Ishizuka's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

2021

Clinical Trials

Clinical Care

Overview

Jeffrey Ishizuka, MD, is a medical oncologist who treats patients with melanoma (a type of skin cancer) at Smilow Cancer Hospital.

An active researcher, Dr. Ishizuka also runs a tumor immunology lab where he seeks out new ways to use the immune system to treat cancer and benefit cancer patients.

Dr. Ishizuka earned a DPhil (doctor of philosophy, which is equivalent to a PhD), in immunology studying CD8+ T cells, a type of immune cell that is capable of attacking and killing tumor cells. These cells have been shown to be critical mediators of response to immunotherapies used in melanoma and other diseases.

He completed medical school at Harvard University, internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and medical oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Ishizuka is an assistant professor of medicine (oncology), pathology and immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine.

Clinical Specialties

Melanoma and Onco-Dermatology; Medical Oncology

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Locations

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