Management of Lymphomas: A Case-Based Approach (PDF)

Northwestern University Medical School in 1982 and earned his PhD in tumor cell biology there in 1984. He then completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in medical oncology at Stanford University Medical Center in California. Thereafter, he served as Head of the Vaccine Biology Section, Experimental Transplantation and Immunology Branch, at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for 12 years. His NCI laboratory is credited with the pioneering bench-to-clinic development of a therapeutic cancer vaccine for B-cell malignancies, which was recently reported as positive in a landmark national Phase III clinical trial. This was one of three recently positive Phase III clinical trials of cancer vaccine immunotherapy. From 2004-14 Dr Kwak served as Chairman of the Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma and Co-Director of the Center for Cancer Immunology Research at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, where he also held the Justin Distinguished Chair in Leukemia Research. As Chair, his department successfully captured extensive research support, including large team science grants, such as two SPORE grants in Lymphoma and Multiple Myeloma, respectively, from the NCI and a SCOR program project grant awarded by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He also led the expansion of the department's laboratory research space and launched biospecimens banks to support translational research. A committed physician, scientist, and mentor, his vision is to assemble and lead research teams to integrate basic discoveries from academic laboratories with translational clinical development to first-in-human clinical trials of novel 'homegrown' therapeutics, such as next generation cancer immunotherapies. He plays a key role in the future direction of City of Hope's translational and precision medicine and 'teamwork science' initiatives. He is an expert in the clinical management of patients with low grade lymphomas. In 2010 Dr Kwak was named to the TIME 100, one of the world's 100 most influential people by TIME magazine, for his 20 year commitment to the science of cancer immunotherapy. In 2016, he was awarded the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine for his pioneering research in cancer immunotherapy.