Georgia Chatzivassiliou is a Senior Scientist at Genentech, a biotechnology organization, in the areas of immunotherapy for cancer treatment and Translational Oncology, and is also a postdoc mentor.

She received a bachelors degree in Biochemistry at Oberlin College in the US and a Ph.D. at Columbia University in America, while she was a post-doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2008 to 2014, she worked as a Scientist at Genentech and from 14’ until now, she has been a Senior Scientist at the same Organization.

What attracted her to Genentech was the potential to do cutting-edge research with a direct impact on cancer patients’ lives. Since joining, she has had the opportunity to work with colleagues across the Organization on exciting projects and has drawn inspiration from the creativity and drive that is an integral part of the research culture there.

“The creativity, drive and collaborative spirit I share with my colleagues inspire and motivate me to strive for innovation in drug discovery,” she writes in her profile on the Genentech website.

as a Scientist in Translational Oncology, and my laboratory has carried out research on several areas of Oncology including Cancer Signaling, Tumor Metabolism and Cancer Immunology.

Her laboratory focuses on the discovery and validation of new therapeutic targets in oncology. Their current area of investigation is the PI3K pathway and specifically the mechanisms of regulation of PI3K signaling with the goal of identifying novel strategies for therapeutic targeting of this pathway. They use biochemical, cell and molecular and proteomic approaches and perform structure/function studies as well as genetic screens to characterize the wiring and regulation of mutant PI3K signaling pathways in breast and colorectal cancer.

Previous work from her laboratory has focused on deciphering the regulation and targeting of the RAF/MAPK pathway in cancer, characterizing the role of tumor metabolism pathways in tumorigenesis and investigating therapeutic strategies for reversing tumor immune suppression and boosting anti-tumor immune responses.

She has been awarded the “The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Fellowship Award” in 2002-2005, “NIH Pathway to Independence (PI) Howard Temin K99 / R00 Award” in 2008, and the “Key Contributor Award” in 2010.