Laurie H. Glimcher, MD

Laurie H. Glimcher is the president and chief executive officer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and also serves as chief executive officer of Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare, director of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and a trustee of Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Care. Dr. Glimcher is presently the proposed Richard and Susan Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Prior to the Institute, she served as the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, New York, where she was also Professor of Medicine. In addition, Dr. Glimcher was Provost for Medical Affairs of Cornell University. Prior to this, she was the Irene Heinz Given Professor of Immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she was director of the Division of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she headed one of the top immunology programs in the world. She also served as Senior Physician and Rheumatologist at the Brigham and Woman’s Hospital. Dr. Glimcher received her postdoctoral training at Harvard and in the Laboratory of Immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, and is board certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology. She received her BA degree from Radcliffe College and her MD from Harvard Medical School. She is widely considered to be one of the world leaders in understanding cellular differentiation pathways in lymphocytes and has made seminal discoveries of key transcription factors that drive lineage commitment and activation in the immune system. Most recently, she has discovered a critical signaling pathway in both tumor cells and in host immune responses, translating her basic discoveries in the control of immune cell differentiation into a new approach to cancer immunotherapy.