Dr. Johnathan Arnon is a senior medical oncologist specializing in lung cancer at Hadassah Medical Center and a member of the thoracic multidisciplinary tumor board and palliative care unit. His research focuses on developing and optimizing adoptive T-cell–based therapies for solid tumors, and he serves as lead physician on several clinical studies evaluating cellular immunotherapies.
Dr. Arnon trained at the Max Delbrück Center and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin as a research fellow and guest clinician-scientist under the mentorship of Prof. Thomas Blankenstein and Dr. Thomas Kammertöns. There, he used unique transgenic mouse models harboring a diverse human TCR repertoire to study tumor neoantigen immunogenicity and to isolate and characterize mutant antigen-specific TCRs. His work established an ongoing research collaboration between HCRI, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Max Delbrück Center, and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, encompassing joint research programs, scientific exchange, and several German-Israeli collaborative research grants.
His current research combines TCR discovery and optimization with the generation of patient-derived tumor models, including organoids and patient-derived xenografts, to develop and evaluate novel immunotherapies in clinically relevant models and advance them toward clinical translation.
Clinical and genetic characteristics of carriers of the TP53 c.541C > T, p.Arg181Cys pathogenic variant causing hereditary cancer in patients of Arab-Muslim descent Arnon, J., Zick, A., Maoz, M., Salaymeh, N., Gugenheim, A., Marouani, M., Mor, E., Hamburger, T., Saadi, N., Elia, A., Ganz, G., Fahham, D., Meirovitz, A., Kadouri, L., Meiner, V, Yablonski-Peretz, T., & Shkedi-Rafid, S. (2024). Clinical and genetic characteristics of carriers of the TP53 c.541C > T, p.Arg181Cys pathogenic variant causing hereditary cancer in patients of Arab-Muslim descent. Familial Cancer.
Clinical Characteristics, Response to Platinum-Based Chemotherapy and Poly (Adenosine Phosphate-Ribose) Polymerase Inhibitors in Advanced Lung Cancer Patients Harboring BRCA Mutations Arnon, J., Tabi, M., Rottenberg, Y., Zick, A., Blumenfeld, P, Hamburger, T, Pikarsky, E, Avraham, E, Popovtzer, A., Yablonski-Peretz, T., Kadouri, L., & Nechushtan, H. (2023). Clinical Characteristics, Response to Platinum-Based Chemotherapy and Poly (Adenosine Phosphate-Ribose) Polymerase Inhibitors in Advanced Lung Cancer Patients Harboring BRCA Mutations. Cancers 2023, Vol. 15, Page 4733, 15(19), 4733.
Planning Target Volume and Nodal Status Predict Clinical Outcomes After Chemoradiation and Durvalumab in Stage III Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Aslan O., Arnon J. (equal contribution), Averbuch I, Reinhorn D., Nechushtan H. Rottenberg Y., Blumenfeld P. (2025). Planning Target Volume and Nodal Status Predict Clinical Outcomes After Chemoradiation and Durvalumab in Stage III Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. Thoracic Cancer 16, no. 14. e70130.
Predictive value of ENLIGHT-DP in patients with metastatic lung adenocarcinoma treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors and platinum chemotherapy directly from histopathology slides using inferred transcriptomics Arnon J., Dinstag G., Tirosh O., Gugel L., Kinar Y., Gottlieb T., Elia A., Rottenberg Y., Nechushtan H., Tabi M., Blumenfeld P., Pikarsky E., Beker T., Aharonov R., & Popovtzer A. (2025). Predictive Value of ENLIGHT-DP in Patients with Metastatic Lung Adenocarcinoma Treated with Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors and Platinum Chemotherapy Directly from Histopathology Slides Using Inferred Transcriptomics. Journal of Immunotherapy of Cancer.
Porush, E., Arnon, J. (equal contribution), Pinchover, B., Stern, E., Shapira, O. M., Jean, D., Blum, G., Yakobovich, E., Wald, H., Peled, A., Wang, Z., Belbaraka, E., Friese, C., Blankenstein, T., Kammertoens, T., & Wald, O. (2026). Entinostat Enhances Antigen-Specific CD8 T-Cell Response to Immunotherapies in Lung Cancer Models. Pharmaceuticals, 19(7), 1034.