George C. Prendergast

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George C. Prendergast (born 1961 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American biomedical scientist whose work focuses on cancer and the immune system. Since 2004, he has been the president and CEO of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR) and he also serves as co-director of the Program in Cancer Cell Biology & Signaling at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University. He earned a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Princeton University. After postdoctoral work at the American Cancer Society/Howard Hughes Medical Institute at NYU Medical Center, he worked in the Department of Cancer Research at Merck. In 1993 he joined The Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1999 he became a senior director at DuPont Pharmaceuticals. He moved his groups to LIMR in 2002 and became president and CEO there in 2004, where he created the acapreneurial model to blend academic research with invention and development. His current research includes new uses for IDO1 inhibitors in cancer therapy, the role of IDO2 in cancer and autoimmunity, and therapeutic antibodies targeting Bin1 and RhoB for autoimmune and diabetic complications. His team helped pave the way for IDO1 inhibitors as a new form of oral cancer immunotherapy. In 2008 he was named one of Princeton University’s 250 most influential alumni, and he served as Editor-in-Chief of Cancer Research from 2010 to 2017. In 2018 he received the Havens Chair in Biomedical Research from the Lankenau Medical Center Foundation.