Michael A. Caligiuri – Candidate for Treasurer of AACR

The voting for the 2025 AACR Annual Election is now open, where members will vote for the next President-Elect, Treasurer, five Board Members, and four members of the Nominating Committee. This year Michael A. Caligiuri, MD, FAACR is a candidate for treasurer of AACR.

About the candidate

Michael A. Caligiuri, MD, FAACR, is currently a professor in the Department of Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope National Medical Center and Beckman Research Institute in Duarte, California. From 2018 to 2023, Dr. Caligiuri served as the president and physician-in-chief at City of Hope. Prior to that, he was the CEO (2007–2018) and deputy director (2003–2007) of the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute at Ohio State University. He also held multiple leadership roles at Ohio State, including director of the Division of Hematology and Oncology and professor in the Departments of Internal Medicine and Cancer Biology and Genetics. Earlier in his career, Dr. Caligiuri was a professor at Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the State University of New York at Buffalo, as well as an instructor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.

Career highlights

• Dedicated to advancing cancer research and treatment, with a particular focus on hematologic malignancies.
• Research focuses on immunology and immunotherapy, particularly in the context of lymphoma, leukemia, and both liquid and solid tumors.
• Studies human natural killer (NK) cells and their potential in cancer treatment, especially through chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) NK cells.
• Developed methods to improve NK cell function using proprietary retroviral transduction and generated CAR NK cells from peripheral blood, umbilical cord blood, and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
• Co-chair of the AACR Oncology Industry Partnering Event (2024-present), chair of the Fellows of the AACR Academy Nomination and Election Oversight Subcommittee (2023-present), and scientific editor for Blood Cancer Discovery (2023-present).
• Elected a Fellow of the AACR Academy in 2018 and served as chair of the AACR Cancer Progress Report Steering Committee and president of AACR (2017-2018).

Awards and honors

• Simon M. Shubitz Lecturer and Award, University of Chicago CCC (2018).
• NCI Director’s Service Award (2012).
• NCI MERIT Award (2010).
• NCI Eminent Lecture Award (2010).
• Basic Science Mentor Award, American Society of Hematology (2022).
• Tullman Lecture in Hematology, Yale Cancer Center (2019).
• Keynote speaker, California Cancer Registrars Association Annual Education Meeting, “Precision Medicine” (2019).

Education

Earned a BA in humanities and health sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1997. Completed an MS in physiology (1982) and an MD (1983) at Stanford University. Trained as a clinical fellow in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (1983-1989), where he also served as an intern and resident in internal medicine. Completed a fellowship in medical oncology and tumor immunology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School (1986-1989).