Evan J. Lipson MD

Dr. Lipson is an internationally-recognized cutaneous oncology and clinical immunotherapy specialist at Johns Hopkins. He received his medical degree in 2005 from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, where he graduated with distinction in research. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and completed a Medical Oncology fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

Dr. Lipson's primary research interest is in translational clinical trials for patients with melanoma and other skin cancers. As a member of the Johns Hopkins Melanoma and Cancer Immunology Programs, he focuses on evaluating novel therapies for patients with high-risk or advanced disease.

Dr. Lipson’s publications include the first reports of organ transplant recipients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors for advanced cancer (J Clin Onc 2014, New Engl J Med 2016), and the first description of kidney retransplantation performed after anti–PD-1–related allograft rejection (Amer J Transplant 2020). Based on his published work, Dr. Lipson initiated the first prospective clinical trial testing a novel combination of immune-based therapies for kidney transplant recipients with advanced selected cancers (Schenk et al., J Clin Onc 2024).

Dr. Lipson is a leader in the clinical development of relatlimab, an antibody blocking the LAG-3 immune checkpoint. He is the Principal Investigator of a phase 2 trial testing combination immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy—including anti-LAG-3—for patients with advanced basal cell carcinoma. In June 2021, Dr. Lipson presented findings from the first phase 3 study establishing the LAG-3 pathway as the third immune checkpoint pathway in history, after CTLA-4 and PD-1, for which blockade has clinical benefit. (Lipson et al., ASCO Annual Meeting) Based on results from this study, the FDA approved relatlimab+nivolumab in March 2022.

In addition to his research activities, Dr. Lipson is an educator in the field of cancer immunotherapy. Many of his lectures focus on the management of immune-mediated drug toxicities associated with novel cancer drugs. Dr. Lipson conducts regular clinical practices in Baltimore, Maryland and at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. as part of the multidisciplinary Melanoma Program at Johns Hopkins.