Elizabeth Jaffee, MD, FAACR
Elizabeth M. Jaffee, M.D., FAACR, FACP, FAAAS, FAIO
The Dana and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli Professor of Oncology
Deputy Director, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
Co-Director, of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program
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4M07 Bunting Blaustein Cancer Research Building 
1650 Orleans Street, Baltimore, MD. 21287
410-955-2957 (Phone)
410-614-8216 (Fax)
Administrative Assistant:  Keyah James
Kjames24@jhu.edu; 410-502-7180
Biography
Dr. Jaffee is an internationally recognized expert in cancer immunology and pancreatic cancer.  She studies the pancreatic tumor microenvironment using preclinical models, and tests novel immunotherapies in patients.  She is Deputy Director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Co-Director of the Skip Viragh Pancreatic Cancer and Associate Director of the Bloomberg Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.  Dr. Jaffee is known for developing the most successful translational pancreatic cancer program in the country that has served as a model for other outstanding programs.    Dr. Jaffee is a Past President of AACR.  She has served on many committees at the National Cancer Institute, including as a co-chair of the Biden Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel which identified high impact research priorities for the NCI, Chair of the National Cancer Advisory Board, and Chair of the President’s Cancer Advisory Panel.  She currently serves as Chief Medical Advisor to the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research.  She is the inaugural director of the Convergence Institute for Integrating Technologies and Computational Sciences at Johns Hopkins.  Dr. Jaffee is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the SITC Academy of Immuno-Oncology and a Fellow of the AACR Academy.
Research Topics
Dr. Jaffee’s research is focused on the development of novel vaccine approaches that overcome immune tolerance to cancers, and she currently holds six vaccine patents. Dr. Jaffee has completed multiple studies testing an allogeneic tumor vaccine in patients with pancreatic cancer who were eligible for complete surgical resection of their tumors, but whose cancers are still expected to recur at rates as high as 80% one year following surgery. Dr. Jaffee's first study demonstrated the safety of the vaccine and identified a dose that appears to demonstrate immune activation associated with improved disease-free survival in this patient population. These trials have also allowed Dr. Jaffee to develop both genomic and proteomic methods for identifying new pathways and biomarkers associated with the development and progression of pancreatic cancers. As an example, Dr. Jaffee recently identified the protein Annexin A2 that appears to be overexpressed in pancreatic cancers. Her group has shown that this protein changes location in the pancreatic cancer cell when compared with normal pancreatic tissue cells. This change in location gives the cancer cell the ability to spread from the pancreas to the liver and other organs. In animal models, Dr. Jaffee has shown that the inhibition of this new protein’s expression results in the prevention of pancreatic cancer spread. She is currently developing a therapy that targets this protein and plans on testing this in patients in the future.
Selected Publications
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Foley K, Rucki AA, Xiao Q, Zhou D, Leubner A, Mo G, Kleponis J, Wu AA, Sharma R, Jiang Q, Anders RA, Iacobuzio-Donahue CA, Hajjar KA, Maitra A, Jaffee EM, Zheng L. Semaphorin 3D autocrine signaling mediates the metastatic role of annexin A2 in pancreatic cancer. Science signaling. 2015; 8 (388): ra77. PMCID: PMC4811025.
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Keenan BP, Saenger Y, Kafrouni MI, Leubner A, Lauer P, Maitra A, Rucki AA, Gunderson AJ, Coussens LM, Brockstedt DG, Dubensky TW, Jr., Hassan R, Armstrong TD, Jaffee EM. A Listeria vaccine and depletion of T-regulatory cells activate immunity against early stage pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasms and prolong survival of mice. Gastroenterology. 2014; 146 (7): 1784-94 e6. PMCID: PMC4035450.
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Kouo T, Huang L, Pucsek AB, Cao M, Solt S, Armstrong T, Jaffee E. Galectin-3 Shapes Antitumor Immune Responses by Suppressing CD8+ T Cells via LAG-3 and Inhibiting Expansion of Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells. Cancer immunology research. 2015; 3 (4): 412-23. PMCID: PMC4390508.
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Le DT, Wang-Gillam A, Picozzi V, Greten TF, Crocenzi T, Springett G, Morse M, Zeh H, Cohen D, Fine RL, Onners B, Uram JN, Laheru DA, Lutz ER, Solt S, Murphy AL, Skoble J, Lemmens E, Grous J, Dubensky T, Jr., Brockstedt DG, Jaffee EM. Safety and survival with GVAX pancreas prime and Listeria Monocytogenes-expressing mesothelin (CRS-207) boost vaccines for metastatic pancreatic cancer. J Clin Oncol. 2015; 33 (12): 1325-33. PMCID: PMC4397277.
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Lutz ER, Wu AA, Bigelow E, Sharma R, Mo G, Soares K, Solt S, Dorman A, Wamwea A, Yager A, Laheru D, Wolfgang CL, Wang J, Hruban RH, Anders RA, Jaffee EM, Zheng L. Immunotherapy converts nonimmunogenic pancreatic tumors into immunogenic foci of immune regulation. Cancer immunology research. 2014; 2 (7): 616-31. PMCID: PMC4082460.