Jeffrey P. Ward, MD

Biography

Jeffrey P. Ward MD Ph.D is an assistant professor in the Division of Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine.  He received his MD and Ph.D degrees from the SUNY Upstate Medical University before entering the Physician Scientist Training Program at Washington University, where he completed internal medicine residency and fellowship training in medical oncology.  During his post-doctoral work with Bob Schreiber, he developed methods to identify and interrogate T-cells specific for neoantigens, which are immunogenic peptides that result from unique mutations, in both mouse models and clinical samples.  In subsequent work, he demonstrated that successful immune checkpoint therapy remodels tumor-infiltrating macrophages from cancer-promoting to inflammatory states.   Dr. Ward joined the faculty at Washington University in 2019 and leads an independent basic and translational research group focused on understanding how tumor-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T-cell responses are restrained by the tumor immune microenvironment of non-small cell and small cell lung cancer using both pre-clinical models and human specimens.  In addition to his laboratory focus, Dr. Ward has a clinical thoracic oncology practice at the Siteman Cancer Center and is actively involved in the conduct of clinical trials investigating novel cellular therapies and other immunotherapy approaches for lung cancer and mesothelioma.  To translate his work on neoantigen-specific T-cell responses into patients, he leads an investigator-initiated trial of a personalized cancer vaccine in extensive-stage small cell lung cancer.