Welcome to Partnology’s Biotech Leader Spotlight Series, where we highlight the remarkable accomplishments and visionary leadership of biotech industry pioneers. This series is about showcasing the groundbreaking strides made by exceptional leaders who have transformed scientific possibilities into tangible realities. Through insightful interviews, we invite you to join us in following the inspiring journeys of these trailblazers who continue to shape the landscape of the biotech industry. This series is not just a celebration of achievements, but a source of inspiration and knowledge for emerging talents, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts eager to contribute to the ever-evolving realm of biotech. This week we are recognizing:
Lisa Butterfield, PhD, Distinguished Scientist & Professor of Immunology
Lisa Butterfield is a Distinguished Scientist at Merck, and an Adjunct Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at University California San Francisco. Her research has been focused on cancer vaccines, immune profiling and cellular therapies for melanoma, hepatocellular cancer and other tumor types. She was most recently Vice President, Research and Development at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, where she supported cell therapy initiatives and clinical trial biospecimen and biomarker projects. Lisa was also the first female President of the Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) and a member of the SITC Executive Committee. Previously a tenured Professor of Medicine, Surgery, Immunology and Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of the Hillman Cancer Center Immunologic Monitoring and Cellular Products Laboratory; she earned a PhD in Biology from UCLA, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in Cellular Immunology and Cancer Gene Therapy also at UCLA.
Could you tell me a little about yourself, your career, and what you’re currently doing at Merck?
I’ve been working in cancer vaccines for about 28 years and all of that’s been academic. I’ve worked on seven different trials with about 100 patients enrolled across those trials. I got to a point in my career when I thought about how I could make the most impact. Then the Merck and Moderna collaboration data was presented at AACR last year, and it showed that Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine combined in a randomized trial with Merck’s pembrolizumab (Keytruda) reduced the risk of a patient’s melanoma coming back by 44% in an over 150 patient trial. The notion that there’s a platform that can work, even when tested in a randomized setting, backed by both Merck and Moderna, made me think that this is the opportunity I’ve been looking for to make the most impact for patients. Not for another 20 or 30 patients from a small grant-funded trial at my institution, but 800 to 1,000 patients per study. That’s why I joined Merck 6 months ago, and why I’m involved in the teams that are running these cancer vaccine studies: to see just how impactful this can be.
Can you walk me through your journey from academia into the corporate world?
I was at UCLA for 17 years; that’s where I earned my PhD in Molecular Biology, had two postdocs in cancer gene therapy and cellular immunology, then became junior faculty as an Adjunct Assistant Professor. I stayed because the opportunities for me to grow as a scientist kept increasing. However, every time I’ve left somewhere, it’s because eventually more doors are closed than open. There comes a point where I’ve taken something as far as I can take it, so I need to move on to get to the next level. I moved over to the University of Pittsburgh for 15 years, running my own lab there as an independent faculty member. I started as an Assistant Professor and ended as a tenured Professor and Core Facility Director where I was leading the Hillman Cancer Institute’s immune profiling and GMP cellular product production facilities. It was a wonderful opportunity to work independently, and I was able to develop the clinical trials I wanted to run; if I had an idea and could fund it, I could do it. So that was a great period of growth for me.
After that, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy had formed and they were doing immunotherapy combinations that were completely novel with very deep immune profiling. I wanted again to expand my scope, to continue to grow and make a bigger impact. I joined the team as VP of R&D in 2018. That was my first opportunity to work side-by-side in a more biotech-structured environment with cross functional teams. When I joined Merck I already had that biotech structure experience, which allowed the transition from academia into a large corporate company a bit smoother.
What are some of your proudest professional accomplishments?
I’m a PhD research scientist. I did not go to medical school. But during my second postdoc, I started bench-to-bedside cancer vaccine studies and was able to collaborate with my physician colleagues to make an impact on patient health. In our first trial, one of the patients who had late stage melanoma, with tumors all over her skin that were not removable, received our outpatient cancer vaccine and her tumors melted away and stayed away for at least a decade. That was one of my proudest moments early on in my career. It was just an incredible feeling of being on that team and helping that patient, it was a pivotal moment in my career that really inspired me.
I was also the first female President of the Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC). At the time, they had run women against men for the position, and women had never won over the history of the society for over 30 years. The leadership team finally decided to nominate two women to ensure a woman would become President. I spent 12 years in leadership at SITC which enabled me to help create the Women’s Leadership Institute through the society. This program provides leadership training programs for women, including how to negotiate, how to break through the glass ceiling, etc. This has enabled my co-organizers and I to take the lessons we’ve learned throughout our careers in academia, biotech, and pharma and impart them to younger women in the field. The goal is to give women the right tools, because we all want it to be a meritocracy and we’re not there yet. That’s the other thing I’m most proud of in my career.
With rapid advancements in areas like gene editing, personalized medicine, and synthetic biology, what do you see as the most promising technologies over the next 10 years?
The cell therapy engineering technologies are amazing – for instance our ability to have conditional triggering of cells and based editing – are all very important. When I started graduate school, I thought I would end up in gene therapy, but at that time the field was technologically very different. I thought I was going to spend 10 years in a dark corner of the lab cloning genes into viral vectors, and then I’m going to be author #50 out of 100 on the outcomes, cause it was just moving so slowly. Now these engineering technologies are allowing us to have a greater impact.
I was recently on the FDA Cell, Tissue and Gene Therapy Advisory Committee and we reviewed the blindness study for the ocular gene therapy, Luxturna, which is the world’s first approved gene replacement therapy for an inherited blinding eye condition, and one of the first gene replacements for any human disease. It was amazing to see the difference it made in patients’ lives; they weren’t completely cured but they were able to maintain independence and navigate places on their own. I think gene therapy technologies will be revolutionary in years to come.
In regards to cancer vaccines, I think the advance is probably the ability to identify personalized neoantigens. The RNA vaccine platform has been developed over the past decade to make it more stable and usable, so now we’re able to harness that platform and the technology to quickly sequence tumors one by one and identify neoantigens for vaccination. Tumor-specific neoantigens can serve as targets of adaptive immunity to cancer and may also be optimal targets of cancer immunotherapy against established tumors. It’s an amazing time where we can really make a difference in both cancer and gene therapy.
With the experience and insights you have gained, what advice would you give to young people aspiring to work in the biotech/pharma industry?
I stayed in academia until very recently, so I think some advice would first be that it’s never too late to make that jump to biotech or pharma. And you can always go back and forth, don’t ever feel like you’re stuck in one lane. I would also say that resilience and perseverance is key: there’s no job in science, medicine, drug development or biomedical research that isn’t hard. In academia, you will constantly be doing 20 things at once; committees, reviews, teaching, and all the while you’re competing for funding. So resilience is an incredibly important characteristic. In biotech/pharma, there’s an ability to focus more deeply on your areas, but there are still constant successes and failures. Your mindset needs to be: if there’s a big rock in my way, there’s always a way around it. If going left doesn’t work, try going right. If you really want to move things forward, whether in a specific project or in your entire career, there really is a way to do that and no one can stop you.
Where can we find you when you are out of the lab/ office? What are your hobbies?
I get to sing with the SITC house cover band, The Checkpoints, which is a band made up of scientists and clinicians. We will be playing at the SITC conference this November in San Diego. I sing alto, so lower harmonies and a few songs as lead. It’s really just the most fun I have all year. I spend part of the time on stage singing and part of the time on the dance floor. I also love spending time with my 18 year old cat, Pancetta.
