Dr. Cubillos-Ruiz is a tenured Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine with an original research program focused on the understanding of organelle stress responses as key regulators of immune cell function in health and disease. He received his bachelor’s degree in microbiology from University of Los Andes (Bogota, Colombia) in 2004 and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Tumor Immunology from Dartmouth Medical School (Hanover, NH) in 2010. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and Weill Cornell Medicine, under the mentorship of Dr. Laurie Glimcher, Cubillos-Ruiz pioneered novel approaches to decipher the role of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response pathways in cancer immunobiology. In 2015, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine, where he has since led groundbreaking research aimed at understanding the transcriptional and immunometabolic programs that ER stress controls in cancer, inflammation, infectious diseases, and pain.

Currently, Dr. Cubillos-Ruiz serves as The William J. Ledger, M.D., Distinguished Professor for Infection and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine and Co-Leader of the Cancer Biology Research Program at The Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center. Dr. Cubillos-Ruiz holds The Bruce Laine Ballard MD Award for Excellence in Mentorship and has been recognized as a Diversity Pioneer by Weill Cornell Medicine. He continues to make significant contributions to the fields of basic and translational immunology with his unique interdisciplinary approach and original discoveries.

Welcome to this exciting seminar!

A student lunch will be organized at 12:00 – 13:00 on the 30th of September. If you are interested in joining the student lunch, please contact Rene Wong (rene.wong@helsinki.fi).

Selected publications:

Leukocyte-intrinsic ER stress responses contribute to chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. Fonseca MM, …, Cubillos-Ruiz JR*, Romero-Sandoval EA*. Sci Transl Med. 2025 Oct 29;17(822):eady5288. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.ady5288.

Transgelin 2 guards T cell lipid metabolism and antitumour function. Hwang SM, …, Cubillos-Ruiz JR. Nature. 2024 Nov;635(8040):1010-1018. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08071-y.

Iron Chelation Therapy Elicits Innate Immune Control of Metastatic Ovarian Cancer. Sandoval TA, …, Cubillos-Ruiz JR. Cancer Discov. 2024 Oct 4;14(10):1901-1921. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-23-1451.PMID: 39073085

High-grade serous ovarian cancer development and anti-PD-1 resistance is driven by IRE1α activity in neutrophils. Emmanuelli A, …, Cubillos-Ruiz JR. Oncoimmunology. 2024 Oct 2;13(1):2411070. doi: 10.1080/2162402X.2024.2411070.