The Vilcek Foundation has recently appointed Dr. Jedd Wolchok to its board of directors, effective from May 1, 2024. Dr. Wolchok is currently serving as the Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center, and he is also a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.
“Jan, Marica, and I are delighted to welcome Jedd to the Vilcek Foundation board,” says Vilcek Foundation President Rick Kinsel. “We look to our board of directors for insight and perspective on our projects and programs: Jedd is not only a leader in immunotherapy and oncology, but an academic and scientific mentor, and a philanthropist in his own right. We are honored and grateful to have him as a member of our team and look forward to working with him as we continue to develop our prizes and programs.”
Dr. Wolchok is a member of the board of directors who previously served as a juror for the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science. His work in immunology and oncology makes him uniquely qualified to advise the foundation on science, biotechnology, and medicine prizes and program initiatives.
As a clinician-scientist, Dr. Wolchok’s research has helped establish immunotherapy as a fundamental approach to cancer treatment. His laboratory is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Research Project Grant Program, which supports research into novel immunotherapeutic agents in pre-clinical laboratory models. Dr. Wolchok’s work at the Memorial Sloan Cancer Center played a significant role in the clinical development that led to the approval of ipilimumab and the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab for advanced melanoma.
Dr. Wolchok worked under the guidance of Dr. Jan Vilcek, the founder of the Vilcek Foundation, during his graduate studies at NYU from 1989 to 1993. Dr. Vilcek subsequently served as Dr. Wolchok’s PhD advisor. In his memoir, Love and Science, Dr. Vilcek highlights Dr. Wolchok’s clinical trials of ipilimumab as representing the future of immunotherapy applications, a field pioneered by Dr. Vilcek with the development of infliximab.
Dr. Wolchok was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2023 and is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He serves on the board of directors of the American Association for Cancer Research and has also served on the board of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Dr. Wolchok is a full member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and serves as the center director for the Parker Institute of Immunotherapy. In addition to his clinical and research practices, he is a member of the Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award Selection Committee and a mentor with the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
