Marta Luksza, PhD

Associate Member
Administrative Contact:
Mikayla Williams
Email: Willm14@mskcc.org

About

Dr. Marta Łuksza is an Associate Attending Member in the Computational Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and is affiliated with the Olayan Center for Cancer Vaccines. Dr. Łuksza’s research focuses on predictive evolutionary modeling of immune-driven adaptation in tumors and viruses to inform cancer immunotherapies and vaccine design. By integrating evolutionary modeling, immuno-oncology, statistical physics, and machine learning, her lab develops computational frameworks that guide translational decision-making in cancer and infectious disease. She is recognized for co-developing the influenza fitness model, which informs global vaccine strain selection, and for pioneering the neoantigen fitness model, which captures immunogenicity features of tumor mutations and intra-tumoral heterogeneity to predict patient response to checkpoint blockade therapy. Her work bridges computational biology and translational oncology to improve our understanding of immune-driven evolution and advance precision medicine.
The Luksza Lab

Education

PhD in Computer Science

Free University of Berlin, Germany Joint affiliation with the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin

Appointments

Associate Attending, Computational Oncology Service, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC)

Selected Publications

Meijers, M., D. Ruchnewitz, J. Eberhardt, M. Karmakar, M. Łuksza*, and M. Lässig*, Concepts and Methods for Predicting Viral Evolution. Methods Mol Biol, 2025. 2890: p. 253-290 10.1007/978-1-0716-4326-6_14

Łuksza, M., Z.M. Sethna, L.A. Rojas, J. Lihm, B. Bravi, Y. Elhanati, K. Soares, M. Amisaki, A. Dobrin, D. Hoyos, P. Guasp, A. Zebboudj, R. Yu, A.K. Chandra, T. Waters, Z. Odgerel, J. Leung, R. Kappagantula, A. Makohon-Moore, A. Johns, A. Gill, M. Gigoux, J. Wolchok, T. Merghoub, M. Sadelain, E. Patterson, R. Monasson, T. Mora, A.M. Walczak, S. Cocco, C. Iacobuzio-Donahue, B.D. Greenbaum, and V.P. Balachandran, Neoantigen quality predicts immunoediting in survivors of pancreatic cancer. Nature, 2022. 606(7913): p. 389-395 10.1038/s41586-022-04735-9.

Hoyos, D., R. Zappasodi, I. Schulze, Z. Sethna, K.C. de Andrade, D.F. Bajorin, C. Bandlamudi, M.K. Callahan, S.A. Funt, S.R. Hadrup, J.S. Holm, J.E. Rosenberg, S.P. Shah, I. Vazquez-Garcia, B. Weigelt, M. Wu, D. Zamarin, L.F. Campitelli, E.J. Osborne, M. Klinger, H.S. Robins, P.P. Khincha, S.A. Savage, V.P. Balachandran, J.D. Wolchok, M.D. Hellmann, T. Merghoub*, A.J. Levine*, M. Łuksza*, and B.D. Greenbaum*, Fundamental immune-oncogenicity trade-offs define driver mutation fitness. Nature, 2022. 606(7912): p. 172-179 10.1038/s41586-022-04696-z.

Łuksza, M., N. Riaz, V. Makarov, V.P. Balachandran, M.D. Hellmann, A. Solovyov, N.A. Rizvi, T. Merghoub, A.J. Levine, T.A. Chan, J.D. Wolchok, and B.D. Greenbaum, A neoantigen fitness model predicts tumour response to checkpoint blockade immunotherapy. Nature, 2017. 551(7681): p. 517-520 10.1038/nature24473

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cjjUTyYAAAAJ&hl=en