Dr. Larry W. Kwak received his MD and PhD in tumor cell biology from Northwestern University Medical School. After completing clinical training in internal medicine and medical oncology at Stanford University, he was recruited to the Biological Response Modifiers Program of the National Cancer Institute in 1992. In 1996, he was appointed head of the vaccine biology section at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), then was recruited to M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in 2004, where is he currently the Chairman of the department of lymphoma and myeloma, as well as the Associate Director of the Center for Cancer Immunology Research. Dr. Kwak is also the incumbent of the Moshe Talpaz Endowed Chair in Immunology at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Kwak has served on the program committees for the American Society of Hematology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and the NIH Experimental Immunology Study Section. He is also a past recipient of the ASCO Young Investigator Award. He has served on the editorial board of the scientific journal Blood and on the scientific advisory board of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.
Dr. Kwak's translational scientific and clinical interests span tumor immunology, cancer vaccines, adoptive T-cell immunotherapy, and clinical management of lymphomas and myelomas. He has pioneered use of patient-specific vaccines as treatment against human lymphomas and has served as principal investigator of a multicenter Phase 3 randomized clinical trial of lymphoma vaccination.
He is frequently invited to speak at national and international scientific meetings. He has published in journals such as Science, Nature Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. |