Nir Hacohen, Ph.D.
Core Institute Member, Director of the Cell Circuits Program

The Hacohen lab has pioneered systems biology tools that generate comprehensive cellular and molecular models of immunological processes and enable personalized immunotherapies. In the area of cell-level systems biology, genome-wide genetic screens in primary immune cells have revealed key genes and genetic variants driving the sensing of pathogens, including the discovery that STING is a proton channel, thus explaining its diverse effects on innate immunity. In the area of cell type discovery, the group has contributed to the Human Cell Atlas by discovering new immune cell types including human dendritic cell subsets and their progenitors as well as T cells and their differentiation states. They also identified cell states associated with disease in bacterial/viral sepsis, lupus nephritis, and cancer immunity. More recently, the group discovered that effective immunotherapy is associated with spatially organized immune cell structures in tumors. In the area of cancer vaccines, Hacohen and his colleagues created machine learning-based methods to predict cancer antigens, and developed the first personalized approach to immunotherapy using vaccines that target patient-specific tumor neoantigens. This led to clinical trials in melanoma and glioblastoma multiforme, demonstrating induction of tumor-specific T cells that kill malignant cells and are durable for many years. His lab is currently working on using systems-level technologies to understand mechanisms of human immune diseases and model them in mice, with the goal of catalyzing new therapeutic strategies.
Hacohen is a core institute member and the director of the Center for Cell Circuits at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is the director of cancer immunology at the Mass General Hospital Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research, the David P. Ryan Chair in Cancer Research at the Mass General Cancer Center, and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Hacohen is a recipient of the NIH Director’s Innovator Award, the MGH Scholars Award, and the Martin Prize. He completed his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Stanford, and was a fellow at the Whitehead Institute at MIT. Hacohen developed a yearly international workshop for advancing the careers of young cancer immunologists. He also founded Neon Therapeutics, which is now part of BioNTech.
August 2024