Bernard A. Fox


2022 Tara Withington Public Service Award Recipient

Bernard A. Fox, PhD

Earle A.Chiles Research Institute, Providence Cancer Institute

Bernard A. Fox

Bernard A. Fox, PhD, graduated from the University of Detroit with his B.S. and M.S. degrees, and received his PhD from Wayne State University. He then spent 5 years in Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg’s laboratory at the Surgery Branch, NCI, NIH. After 4 years on the faculty at the University of Michigan, in 1994 he joined Dr. Walter J. Urba, at the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute in Portland, Oregon, with the intent of developing a cancer immunotherapy center of excellence. The Institute’s goal was to do innovative basic science, rapidly translate that science into patients, and train the next generation of scientists and physicians. Dr. Fox has spent the last 29 years working to achieve those goals and is the Harder Family Chair for Cancer Research, Member and Chief of the Laboratory of Molecular and Tumor Immunology, Earle A. Chiles Research Institute, Robert W. Franz Cancer Center, Providence Cancer Institute. In addition, he is also a co-founder and CEO of UbiVac, a clinical stage immunotherapy company developing innovative adoptive immunotherapy strategies and translating findings from his academic lab into first-in-human combination immunotherapy trials that include complex vaccines, T cell agonists and checkpoint blockade.  One of his passions has been to bridge the tumor immunology/cancer immunotherapy community across geographic and political barriers, to improve communication and scientific exchange, augment educational opportunities, and overcome hurdles to the translation of novel science into trials for patients with cancer. The 2011 Hurdles paper (PMID: 22168571) is one example of those efforts. Bringing together 105 scientists from 15 immunotherapy-related societies it spawned the World Immunotherapy Council (WIC). Nurtured by the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), the WIC has helped bring fellows from the participating societies to meet and exchange scientific findings and serves as an informal bridge, joining scientists from various groups and societies for meetings and educational exchange.

 

Dr. Fox lectures widely, has served on advisory boards for biotech, pharmaceutical, and pharma services companies, and authored more than 195 papers/book chapters. He has served/serves as a Professor at Universities in Munich, Amsterdam, Xian, and Taipei, and as a member of review committees for the NIH, FDA, philanthropic and academic organizations in the USA, Europe, and Asia. Dr. Fox is also an adjunct graduate faculty member in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, at OHSU and member of the NCI-designated Knight Cancer Institute. Dr. Fox is currently Chair of the WIC, a past President of SITC and a SITC Ambassador. In 2015, Dr. Fox received the Visionary/Legacy Award from SITC.  In 2020 Dr. Fox received a SITC Team Science Award and the Melanoma Foundation Onlus Bridge Award, for outstanding and lifelong contributions to melanoma research.