David Tuveson is the Roy J. Zuckerberg Professor of Cancer Research, and Director of the Cancer Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Lustgarten Foundation.
Dr. Tuveson obtained a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at M.I.T. and medical and doctoral degrees at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Tuveson was a medical resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a medical oncology fellow at Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care. During his postdoctoral years in Boston, Dr. Tuveson co-developed KIT inhibitors for gastrointestinal stromal tumors with George Demetri, and created several Kras dependent mouse cancer models with Tyler Jacks. His lab generated the first mouse models of ductal pancreatic cancer at the University of Pennsylvania, and subsequently moved to the University of Cambridge to develop preclinical and clinical therapeutic strategies for pancreatic cancer. In Cambridge, his lab identified a variety of parameters that limit therapeutic efficacy in pancreatic cancer, including poor drug delivery and survival factors in the microenvironment. He moved back to the US to direct the Cancer Therapeutics Initiative at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 2016, he was appointed as director of the Laboratory’s NCI-designated Cancer Center. He has an adjunct appointment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
He has received the Rita Allen Foundation Scholar award. the Waldenström Award for outstanding researchers, and Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence, Pancreatic Diseases. He has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation.