Nicholas Gascoigne, Ph.D, will be the newest faculty member at the Immunology Center of Georgia (IMMCG), starting as a professor of medicine on Jan. 2, 2025. He has previously served as a professor and the head of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the National University of Singapore and at the Scripps Research Institute.
IMMCG was established in 2022 as part of the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. Gascoigne will join a team of 15 immunology faculty members. 11 of those members were hired at the center’s founding.
“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Gascoigne to our team,” said Catherine “Lynn” Hedrick, Ph.D. “His extensive experience and pioneering research in T cell function and cancer immunotherapy will be an invaluable contribution to IMMCG’s mission of enriching lives through new treatments, therapies, and disease preventions.”
Gascoigne’s research centers around T cell signaling, activation, and development. He focuses particularly on the impact of the microbiome and the signaling pathways in CAR-T cells, which is a type of cancer immunotherapy treatment that uses genetically altered T cells to fight cancer.
Gascoigne received his PhD from University College London before doing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. He taught at the Scripps Research Institute in 2005 and at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore in 2013 before leading their Department of Microbiology and Immunology until 2020.
He has been an active member of the American Association of Immunologists, the British Society of Immunology, and the Singaporean Society for Immunology. Gascoigne served as the Singaporean Society for Immunology’s president from 2017 until 2021. He was also elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2023.
“I chose to join IMMCG and contribute to research at the Georgia Cancer Center and the Medical College of Georgia because of the exciting new team here and the chance to help build a great immunology center under the leadership of Drs. Ley and Hedrick,” said Gascoigne. “I look forward to joining a dynamic team of investigators committed to exploring innovative new approaches to treating cancer and autoimmune diseases.”
Gascoigne will additionally serve as a mentor to junior faculty members, postdoctoral students, and graduate students at IMMCG in his new role.
“I am convinced that the vibrant new faculty and first-rate facilities will make IMMCG a national leader in the field,” said Gascoigne. “My lab will focus on improving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR-T) therapies, especially in settings that are allogeneic, or genetically dissimilar, to bring treatments to patients faster and more affordably. We will also identify genes that can be inhibited, knocked out, or overexpressed to enhance T cell activity against tumors, applicable to both CAR-T and natural T cell therapies and to both solid tumors and leukemias and lymphomas.”
