medicine in motion: dr. marco davila

Dr. Marco Davila, Senior Vice President and Associate Director for Translational Research at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, has believed for as long as he can remember that hands-on experience is the key to really, deeply, understanding anything.

He attributes this lesson to his father’s 21-year career in the United States Air Force.

“Just because you have a higher rank or title doesn’t necessarily mean you know the more about a process,” Davila says. “So when I wanted to understand something, I always went to the person who was actually doing the thing, with their hands on the process.”

This inherited belief in the importance of getting ones own hands dirty came paired with a trait many children of veterans share: a sense of comfort with frequent change. Davila and his family picked up and moved often throughout his childhood and adolescence, as many military families do.

When Davila, interested in science since his elementary school days, set out to forge his career in research and medicine, that familiarity with a life in motion acted as fuel for his rather rapid rise to a position of prominence in cancer research–a journey that has included stops in Texas, North Carolina, New York City, Tennessee, and Florida.

“It turns out the academic lifestyle is not that much different than the military lifestyle–both can be very nomadic,” Davila laughs.

m. dellas

After completing his undergraduate degrees in chemistry and biochemistry at Texas Christian University, Davila initially set out to obtain a PhD in science, seeing research as the best way to get the “hands-on experience” he so valued in the field that interested him.

“That was me taking part in the scientific process, and I loved it,” he says of his earliest work as a PhD candidate at Duke University School of Medicine. “But at the same time, I started doing some shadowing of doctors’ clinics, to earn a balanced portfolio, and what I found I enjoyed about medicine was the human aspect of it. You have the nurse, you have the doctor, you have the staff–and everyone has the same goal of helping the patient in front of us.

“So it seemed clear to me then that what I wanted to do with my life would involve a balance between the more solo scientific side and the more communal, patient-focused side. The science and the humanity.”

In 2004, Davila graduated from Duke with both his Phd–in immunology–and his MD and moved to New York City to launch his career as a physician-scientist.

He completed his residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital before heading to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for his clinical and research fellowships. At Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Davila played a key role in pioneering the early chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies that have since become a revolutionary treatment for blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma.

After finishing his fellowships, Davila brought his expertise to Vanderbilt University for two years before taking a senior position at Tampa, Florida’s Moffitt Cancer Center, where he directed the cell therapy facility, continuing to lead advancements in CAR T-cell immunotherapy while exercising his passion for caring for patients directly.

Seven years later, it was time for a change. Davila wanted to move his research forward more quickly than he could if he stayed put: “I didn’t want to slow down and wait for my institution to catch up with where I needed my research to be,” Davila explains.

According to an old mentor who began calling at exactly that pivotal moment in Davila’s career, where he needed his research to be was Buffalo, New York.

Dr. Renier Brentjens, who had led the CAR T-cell therapy research and trials that Davila supported as a fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and with whom Davila had remained in touch, had been named Deputy Director of Roswell Park in the fall of 2021 and wanted Davila to join the team. If advancing cell therapy more quickly and efficiently was Davila’s aim, Brentjens told him, Roswell Park was ready.

So in the summer of 2022, Davila–comfortable as ever with the prospect of a new city–packed his bags and headed north.

“So I didn’t come here because I love cold weather and snow,” Davila laughs. “I came here because I had an opportunity to create this engine, to take all my scientific experience, all my experience with clinical trials, and bring them together to make this process happen quickly.”

That is exactly what he has been doing since he joined Roswell Park as Senior Vice President and Associate Director for Translational Research two and a half years ago.

Roswell Park’s Davila Lab, led by Marco Davila himself, is centered around the enhancement of CAR T-cell therapies with research and clinical trials focused not only on the development of new therapies but also on the reduction of their negative side effects, all with the aim of improving outcomes for patients.

“That’s the most important thing,” Davila says. “This work is going to benefit science and patients alike.”