Pr. Taha Merghoub

Taha Merghoub, PhD was born and raised in Algeria. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Algiers, Algeria, DES (Diplôme D’Etudes Supérieures) in Genetics. He went on to receive a M.S. (Applied Biology and Genetics) and Ph.D. degree (Human Genetics).

He is currently a faculty (Attending lab member) at MSK and professor of immunology research in medicine, Weill Cornell, New York, USA. He directs the Ludwig Collaborative Laboratory and the Swim Across America Laboratory at MSK. He is a member researcher of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at MSK. He also leads the biorepository for the Melanoma Service at MSK.

His research focuses on the interplay between tumors and the immune system in early stages of cancer formation, and the development of novel immunotherapeutic treatment strategies with particular focus on melanoma as a model system. The FDA has approved multiple immune therapies (anti-CTLA-4, anti-PD1/PDL-1 and T- VEC) and he is now aiming to combine these treatments with conventional therapies that are known to modulate the immune system such as radiation therapy. He also has interest in studying the genetic determinants of response to immune therapies. His career is focused on developing immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. He has been working on preclinical models and validating the relevance of the findings in clinical samples of patients treated with immunotherapies. His research is conducted within the Ludwig Collaborative and Swim Across America lab and in partnership with members of the Melanoma DMT and other MSK investigators with shared research interests. Dr Merghoub’s findings have been published in top-tier journals including Science, Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Immunology, Cancer Cell. He has a h-index of 61 and over 24 000 citations. His research has also received funding support from several federal agencies and philanthropic organizations.