Nicolas A. Giraldo, MD, PhD

2022 Benjamin Castleman Award

Nicolas Giraldo-Castillo completed his medical studies in Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia in 2011. Subsequently, he completed a Ph.D. in immunopathology and tumor immunology at the Sorbonne University, Paris, France, at Dr. Wolf H. Fridman’s lab. Subsequently, Nicolas completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University Paris V under the direction of Dr. Catherine Fridman. In 2017, he started his training in Anatomical and Clinical Pathology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and obtained his board certification in 2021. Currently, Nicolas is a Molecular Genetic Pathology clinical fellow at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

During his residency, Nicolas worked in Dr. Janis Taube’s laboratory in the development and validation of predictive biomarkers for response to immunotherapy across different cancer types using highly multiplexed imaging technologies and interdisciplinary spatial tissue analysis pipelines. Nicolas has published 30 peer-reviewed articles, including 11 as first/corresponding author, with over 3500 citations. His current work focuses on the implementation of novel technologies for tumor microenvironment characterization, including next-generation sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, mass spectrometry, and multiplex immunofluorescence. In particular, he is interested in deciphering the molecular mechanisms associated with immunomodulation and aggressive clinical behavior in kidney cancer, and the development of novel biomarkers and targeted therapies in this tumor type.

Nicolas has been the recipient of a Ph.D. scholarship from the Colombian and French national institutes of health (COLCIENCIAS and INSERM, respectively, 2011), and multiple awards including the Stowell Orbison Award (2019), the Fred and Janet Sanfilippo Research Award (2019), the Mario Luna Research Award (2019), the AAI Trainee Abstract Award (2020), the Johns Hopkins best abstract in Translational Research (2020), the Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer Team Science Recognition Award (2020), and Johns Hopkins Quality Initiatives and Performance Improvement Research Award (2020).