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Dr. Seth M. Pollack: Faculty Experts

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Dr. Seth M. Pollack

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Director of the Sarcoma Program, Lurie Cancer Center
Steven T. Rosen Professor of Cancer Biology

About

Areas of Focus

  • Cancer vaccines and immunotherapy including checkpoint inhibitors, vaccines, cell therapy and intra-tumor agents
  • Sarcoma (cancers of bone and soft tissue)

Work/Research

  • Developing novel immunotherapies for patients with advanced sarcoma and leveraging unique features of sarcoma immunobiology to improve immunotherapy for all patients with cancer
  • Early-stage sarcoma immunotherapy trials, particularly targeting the cancer-specific protein NY-ESO-1 using adoptive cellular therapies and vaccines, leading to important breakthroughs in our understanding of the sarcoma immune microenvironment
  • Collaborating with veterinarians and organizations such as the Canine Cancer Alliance to learn lessons that might be applicable to humans from pet dogs who naturally develop sarcoma

Career

Pollack is an experienced sarcoma specialist serving as the director of the sarcoma program at the Lurie Cancer Center and the Steven T. Rosen Professor of Cancer Biology at the Feinberg School of Medicine. As a clinician and sarcoma expert, he has twice been featured in the widely followed audio/cd/podcast series Research-to-Practice, and he was lead author of the invited review on sarcoma immunotherapy for the Journal of Clinical Oncology. He has chaired sessions at the annual meetings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the Japanese Society for Medical Oncology (JSMO), the Connective Tissue Oncology Society (CTOS) and gave the keynote talk at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the British Sarcoma Group.

Pollack's awards include the V Foundation Translational Award, the Alliance for Cancer Gene therapy, grants from the Sarcoma Foundation of America and the SARC Career Development Award. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. He is on the National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation Executive Committee and sits on the NCCN guidelines panels for both soft tissue sarcomas and gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

During his 12 years as a sarcoma doctor at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, he received the Sig Kohl Legacy award from the Northwest Sarcoma Foundation for an “outstanding and enduring contribution to the care of sarcoma patients in the Northwest.” He now serves sarcoma patients of Chicago at the Lurie Cancer Center.