Chiara Maria Cattaneo is a Junior Group Leader at IRCCS Istituto Clinico Humanitas, where she leads the Precision Immuno-Oncology Laboratory.

She obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Medical Biotechnology from Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milano, and completed her PhD in Molecular Oncology and Immunology at The Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. Upon returning to Italy, she carried out postdoctoral training at IFOM in Milano and IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele.

Her research has always focused on dissecting the interplay between tumor and immune system at the individual patient level. She developed the tumor organoids–PBMC co-culture platform for the unbiased generation of patient-specific tumor-reactive T cells, and HANSolo, an HLA-agnostic genetic screening method for the personalized identification of cancer neoantigens, both foundational contributions to the field of precision immuno-oncology. She has also contributed to large-scale genomic screening efforts mapping cancer resistance mechanisms, and developed an experimental pipeline to investigate the intrinsic mechanisms by which tumors can actively suppress immune surveillance.

She joined Humanitas in January 2026 as Junior Group Leader, where her laboratory is further advancing the precision immuno-oncology field by developing a novel platform for the de novo generation of patient-specific tumor-reactive T cells for adoptive cell transfer, applicable to any solid tumor type.

Her work has been published in journals including Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Genetics, Cancer Cell and Cancer Discovery. She has secured competitive funding as Principal Investigator, including a major grant from Fondazione Umberto Veronesi, and has received several awards for her research, including the L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Award Italy (2025), the Maria Begnudelli Award for Best Cancer Research Project by the Pezcoller Foundation (2024), and the EACR’s Top 10 Cancer Research Publications recognition (2019).