Alexander Knuth - Biography#
Karl Richard Alexander Knuth is a Professor of Medicine and Medical Oncology at the University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland, and Professor emeritus since 2013. From 2013 - 2020 he was Chief Executive Officer and Medical Director of the National Center for Cancer Care and Research of the National Public Healthcare Provider Hamad Medical Corporation of the State of Qatar in Doha, Qatar. His research interests are in cancer immunology and cancer immunotherapy including cancer vaccine development. His medical oncology focus is on cancers of the gastrointestinal tract and skin cancers.
His pioneering work in cancer immunology started with the longitudinal observation of cancer patients with metastatic disease and unusually favorable clinical courses. He established autologous in vitro systems to study cancer specific T-lymphocyte responses at the clonal level (PNAS 1984). In one of these patients with an advanced malignant melanoma extensive IRB-approved vaccination studies with lethally irradiated autologous melanoma cell clones were performed (PNAS 1989). These resulted in the induction and amplification of cancer cell specific T-lymphocyte responses, eventually leading to the discovery / cloning of the first T-cell defined human cancer antigen MAGE. (Science 1991).
The MAGE gene family is the first of the so-called Cancer/Testis (CT) family of antigens. CT-antigens have become a major target of cancer vaccination strategies. AK played a pivotal role in the development of peptide-, protein- and vector-based cancer vaccines and adjuvants, established immune-monitoring techniques, and discovered tumor escape mechanisms. He was a founding member of the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative (CVC), an international network, supported by the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) and the Cancer Research Institute (CRI), New York under the leadership of Lloyd J. Old. The LICR provided to the collaborators within the CVC GMP-products for complementary vaccination strategies, helped standardize immune-monitoring techniques, and supported international collaborative trial design, IRB-approval, and monitoring.
The human CT-antigen NY-ESO-1 has become a major clinical research focus in AK’s clinical and academic work. NY-ESO-1 was originally cloned from a patient with an advanced squamous cell cancer of the esophagus by Yao Chen and his group in NYC. In AK's longitudinal studies of cancer patients NY-ESO-1 has been identified in as the most immunogenic human cancer antigen known to date. With his research team he found strong clinical correlations of unexpectedly favorable clinical courses of disease in cancer patients with integrated cellular and humoral immune responses against NY-ESO-1 (J. Exp. Med. 1998). Therefore, NY-ESO-1, besides MAGE has become a primary target of cancer vaccine development and vaccination strategies (PNAS 2000, PNAS 2000, PNAS 2006). Combining the newly discovered multiple immune checkpoint inhibitors with vaccination strategies against these highly immunogenic cancer antigens is an ongoing focus of clinical cancer research.
Alexander Knuth graduated from the Medical School of the Free University of Berlin, Germany. He received his medical training in Berlin, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, University of Mainz, Germany and at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle USA. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Hematology/Medical Oncology and Gastroenterology/Hepatology. He is a member of multiple professional societies and serves on scientific advisory boards of Academic Institutions and start-up companies. He was for decades an affiliate of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and is a member of Cancer Research Institute’s (CRI) Scientific Advisory Council.
