Dr. Filippo Giancotti, a leader in Cancer Metastasis Research, Joins the Cancer Center

October 15, 2021

Filippo Giancotti, MD, PhD, has joined the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) as an Irving Family Professor for Cancer Research in the Department of Genetics and Development. Dr. Giancotti, whose faculty appointment began in September, joins the HICCC’s Tumor Biology and Microenvironment Program and will also lead the Cancer Center’s new Cancer Metastasis Initiative.

Portrait of Dr. Filippo Giancotti

Filippo Giancotti, MD, PhD, is a pioneer in understanding cancer metastasis. He joins Columbia from MD Anderson Cancer Center. 

Dr. Giancotti is recognized internationally as a pioneer in cell adhesion and signaling research and has published more than 120 peer-reviewed articles. Since the founding of his first independent laboratory in 1992, Dr. Giancotti has made significant contributions to the understanding of how a class of cell proteins called integrins function and contribute to cancer. In addition, he has discovered a mechanism through which a tumor suppressor, NF2, places a stop on growth when cells touch each other and demonstrated that disruption of this mechanism enables tumor cells to multiply out of control, resist the normal orderly cell-death process, and invade healthy tissues. His current research focuses on understanding how cancer cells move from the primary tumor to seed new metastatic sites in other parts of the body and investigating the mechanisms through which they resist targeted therapies.

“I am delighted to have joined Columbia and the HICCC, where I will be able to collaborate with so many friends and colleagues from different disciplines all bearing on the understanding of cancer metastasis,” says Dr. Giancotti. “In the last decade, we have developed genetic screens in mice that enable the identification of genes that enforce dormancy at premetastatic sites, which explains the clinical latency of metastatic relapse in many cancers, and genes that mediate the reactivation of dormant cells and induce them to form metastases. We want to understand these events at single cell and molecular resolution in order to develop novel therapies for metastasis prevention and therapy.”

Dr. Giancotti has received many honors and recognitions for his contributions to the field of oncology, including the National Cancer Institute’s Outstanding Investigator Award and an Established Investigators Award from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. He joins the HICCC from MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas where he served as the scientific director of the Koch Center and co-leader of the Prostate Cancer Moonshot. He previously held positions at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell. At MD Anderson, Dr. Giancotti established a translational research program on breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancer metastasis. He earned his medical degree with honors and his doctoral degree in cell biology from the University of Turin School of Medicine in Italy. He received board certification in hematology and oncology from the University of Rome.