# Jacob Schachter

Source: https://onco.cc/people/jacob-schachter/  
OnCo record `jacob-schachter` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Built the melanoma and immunotherapy institute at Sheba that has been growing patients' own tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes and giving them back since 2006, more than a decade before any regulator approved the idea.

## Summary

Jacob Schachter directs the Ella Lemelbaum Institute for Immuno-Oncology and Melanoma at Sheba Medical Center, one of very few centres outside the United States to run a tumour-infiltrating lymphocyte programme at scale and for long enough to report durable outcomes. The institute's intent-to-treat analysis, published in Clinical Cancer Research with Michal Besser as first author, enrolled 80 patients with stage IV melanoma and treated 57 with unselected or "young" TIL and high-dose interleukin-2 after non-myeloablative lymphodepletion. The overall response rate was 29 percent for all enrolled patients and 40 percent for those treated, with five complete and 18 partial remissions; all complete responders remained in unmaintained remission at a median 28 months and three-year survival among responders was 78 percent. Twenty-three patients could not be treated, mostly because they deteriorated while the cells were being grown, which is the honest cost of a three-week manufacturing step. Schachter has also been an investigator on the pivotal pembrolizumab melanoma trials.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-25
- Tags: clinician-scientist; immunotherapy
- Role: Director, Ella Lemelbaum Institute for Immuno-Oncology and Melanoma, Sheba Medical Center
- Specialisms: Melanoma; Immunotherapy; Adoptive cell therapy; Clinical trials

## Sources

- Ella Lemelbaum Institute, Sheba Medical Center: https://www.shebaonline.org/departments/cancer-center/
- PubMed author search: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Schachter%20J%5BAuthor%5D%20melanoma%20Sheba

## Connected records

- cancers: [Melanoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/melanoma/)
- fronts: [Cell Therapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/cell-therapy/), [Immunotherapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/immunotherapy/)
- technologies: [Immune checkpoint inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/checkpoint-inhibitor/), [TIL therapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/til-therapy/)
- drugs: [Pembrolizumab](https://onco.cc/drugs/pembrolizumab/)
- institutions: [Sheba Medical Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/sheba/), [Tel Aviv University](https://onco.cc/institutions/tel-aviv-university/)
- bottlenecks: [Manufacturing cost and time for living and radioactive medicines](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-manufacturing-cell-therapy/)
- key papers: [Adoptive transfer of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in patients with metastatic melanoma: intent-to-treat analysis and efficacy after failure to prior immunotherapies](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-besser-til-melanoma-intent-to-treat-ccr-2013/)

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