The ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN) has named Valsamo (Elsa) Anagnostou, MD, PhD, the recipient of its 2026 Young Investigator Award. Through this honor, the group recognizes her as an exceptionally productive translational cancer researcher and molecular oncologist with unique expertise in cancer immunology, cancer genomics, and translational lung cancer research.

Dr. Anagnostou is the Alex Grass Professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine. She is co-director of the Upper Aerodigestive Malignancies Program, director of the Thoracic Oncology Biorepository, leader of Precision Oncology Analytics, and co-leader of the Molecular Tumor Board and the Thoracic Oncology Precision Medicine Center of Excellence in the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

She is the principal investigator (PI) of the Anagnostou Lab at Hopkins. This group is dedicated to advancing cancer research by unraveling the genomic landscape of response and resistance to cancer therapies, with a focus on immunotherapies.  

Group Co-Chairs Peter J. O'Dwyer, MD, and Mitchell D. Schnall, MD, PhD, announced the Young Investigator Award recipient on May 6 at the Spring 2026 Group Meeting. This award recognizes extraordinary scientific achievements and research leadership contributions made by investigators during the early years of their careers. A committee composed of previous recipients and ECOG-ACRIN scientific leaders selects one awardee annually. The award was established in 1992 and is funded by the ECOG Research and Education Foundation.

As part of the honor, Dr. Anagnostou will present her research at the Fall 2026 Group Meeting (October 20-22 in Philadelphia).

Dr. Anagnostou earned both her MD and PhD in cancer biology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She completed a residency in internal medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital and a fellowship in medical oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins.

While a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Anagnostou discovered that tumor cells evade immune surveillance by elimination of immunogenic mutations and associated neoantigens through chromosomal deletions. This was a groundbreaking discovery in the field of cancer immunogenomics, and the Cancer Discovery manuscript describing her findings has been cited over 700 times.

She received several grants and awards during the early stages of her career, including an ECOG-ACRIN Paul Carbone, MD Fellowship Award, the Next Generation Star Award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and the Richard C. Devereaux Outstanding Young Investigator Award in Lung Cancer Prevention from the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and the Prevent Cancer Foundation. In 2016, she was selected as a MacMillan Pathway to Independence Scholar and shortly after obtained a LUNGevity Career Development Award.

In 2016, she was recruited to the faculty at Johns Hopkins and, by 2025, achieved the rank of professor as well as the endowed professorship. Today, she leads the translational research efforts within Hopkins’ Thoracic Oncology Program, tying laboratory discoveries into the program’s clinical trials of immune-based therapies. Her internationally recognized work in cancer genomics and cancer immunotherapy is shaping trials that have the potential to change clinical practice.

Dr. Anagnostou also works to bridge translational research with clinical cancer care by leading initiatives to integrate clinical and genomic data. This approach supports physicians and patients in making more informed decisions about precision medicine treatments. It also enables downstream analyses using real-world health data.

She has pioneered the design of interventional clinical trials that use circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) to monitor response to immunotherapy. A leading example of this work is BR.36, the first ctDNA–driven clinical trial for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NCT04093167), for which she serves as international study chair.

Results from the first stage of this study were published in Nature Medicine and represent a seminal contribution to the field of precision oncology. Stage one of BR.36 met its primary endpoint, providing data defining molecular response, its timing, and its concordance with radiographic imaging. These promising findings led to the launch of the second stage of BR.36, an ongoing phase 2/3 multicenter international trial. If the results are positive, this study has the potential to transform clinical care for patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer receiving immune checkpoint blockade.

Throughout her career, Dr. Anagnostou has been an active member of the ECOG-ACRIN Thoracic Cancer Committee, working closely with the committee co-chairs. Currently, she serves as co-chair of the Lung Biology Subcommittee. Her scientific expertise and guidance have led to an increase in translational work within key ECOG-ACRIN thoracic trials. In addition, she is a member of the ECOG-ACRIN Thoracic Malignancies Integrated Translational Science Center, where she provides expertise on the study of liquid biopsies for lung cancer.

Dr. Anagnostou is the key correlative science investigator for the international DREAM3R phase 3 clinical trial (PrE0506, NCT04334759). DREAM3R was designed to evaluate chemotherapy with and without durvalumab as first-line treatment in patients with unresectable pleural mesothelioma. Primary results, presented as a late-breaking abstract at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2025, showed promising activity from the combination, consistent with prior phase 2 trials.

One of those trials was PrE0505, whose results were published in Nature Medicine. Dr. Anagnostou’s translational work in this trial demonstrated, for the first time, a link between pleural mesothelioma tumor mutation burden and a diverse T-cell repertoire with favorable clinical outcomes.

In addition to her research leadership in thoracic malignancies, Dr. Anagnostou chairs the Data Science Committee at ECOG-ACRIN. Under her leadership, the group is developing data repositories for clinical, digital pathology, radiomic, and genomic data from National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored clinical trials. Through such initiatives, the committee aims to catalyze data analytics nationally and internationally.

Dr. Anagnostou has held faculty and committee responsibilities at multiple American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), ESMO, and AACR annual meetings as well as the IASLC and World Lung Cancer Congresses. Her expertise in cancer genomics and liquid biopsies is constantly sought after, with examples including her involvement as an international liquid biopsy expert on the Break Though Cancer Lung Team, focusing on ALK- driven lung cancer, as well as in AstraZeneca’s LUMA Steering Committee, focusing on assay development for ctDNA minimal residual disease detection.

She is regularly involved with peer review of submitted manuscripts for high-profile scientific journals. She has co-authored over 100 publications.

Dr. Anagnostou’s selection for the 2026 Young Investigator Award reflects not only her remarkable scientific accomplishments, but also her leadership in advancing translational research that brings genomic and immunologic insights directly into patient care. Through her continued contributions to ECOG-ACRIN and the broader oncology community, she is helping to shape a future in which precision medicine and data-driven discovery improve outcomes for patients with thoracic malignancies and beyond.

Julie R. Brahmer, MD, MSc, contributed to this story.