Giants of Cancer Care® Program Inductees

Myeloma

Nikhil C. Munshi, MD

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Munshi is the Kraft Family Chair, director of multiple myeloma immune effector cell therapy, and director of basic and correlative science at the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
He has been described by the International Myeloma Society as a “major force” in both basic science and translational medicine, with research efforts dedicated to improving the understanding of genomic changes in multiple myeloma.
Through his investigations on immunotherapy and immune-gene therapy against novel targets and antigens in myeloma, Munshi discovered that a decrease in number and activity of T-regulatory cells in myeloma could define the ideal time for peptide- and protein-based vaccination strategies.
Additionally, his laboratory team identified cytokines constructed in the bone marrow microenvironment that are responsible for T-regulatory cell dysfunction. This discovery allowed for the ability to target cytokines that then improve T-cell homeostasis.
A further discovery in his laboratory was that telomerase inhibitors can induce telomere shortening, which, in turn, allows apoptosis to occur.

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