Nelson LaMarche, Assistant Professor of Pathology
By Jon Atherton
The Lung Cancer Research Foundation (LCRF) has awarded the 2025 Minority Career Development Award in Lung Cancer to Nelson LaMarche, faculty member at the Yale Cancer Biology Institute at the university’s West Campus.
The LCRF awards grants for projects that demonstrate profound promise to make a sustained and lasting impact on lung cancer research and outcomes.
LaMarche’s research focuses on developing myeloid-targeted immunotherapies for cancer, with an emphasis on how tumors remotely communicate with distant organs to alter normal physiology.
He receives the award for a project that aims to define clinically targetable drivers of pathogenic myeloid cell development for non-small cell lung cancer immunotherapy.
LaMarche joined Yale in 2024 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology. He is also an affiliate of the Yale Cancer Center.
“I am extremely grateful to receive this prestigious award from the LCRF,” said LaMarche. “Their support is critical for our exploration of cancer immunology, particularly in myeloid cells, to develop new therapies for solid tumors.”
Setting out to follow his Dominican father in the clinical setting, the self-proclaimed “germophobe” instead undertook a Ph.D. in Immunology at Harvard University where he studied the role of the immune system in controlling adipose tissue physiology and metabolic homeostasis. LaMarche completed postdoctoral studies at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he developed a translational research program focused on myeloid cells in cancer immunotherapy.
At Yale, the LaMarche Lab works closely with both physicians and basic scientists, combining high-dimensional profiling of cancer patient tissues with detailed mechanistic studies in mouse models to develop new immunotherapies for solid tumors.
LCRF’s Minority Career Development Award for Lung Cancer, is a two-year funding initiative aimed at advancing early-stage researchers from underrepresented groups and enhancing their representation in the lung cancer research workforce.
The Lung Cancer Research Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization focused on funding innovative, high-reward research with the potential to extend survival and improve quality of life for people with lung cancer.