Dr. Kellie N. Smith, a Baltimore, MD native, completed her doctoral work at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine with a focus on T cell immunology and immunotherapy. During her fellowship training at Johns Hopkins, she worked under the mentorship of Dr. Drew M. Pardoll identifying the correlates of response to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer. She joined the faculty in early 2016 and has since collaborated with Drs. Julie Brahmer and Patrick Forde on multiple lung cancer immunotherapy clinical trials aimed at improving treatment options, preventing disease recurrence, and understanding the predictors of response to treatment in both early and advanced stage lung cancer.

With a grant from the Lung Cancer Foundation of America, Dr. Smith and her team perform detailed analyses of the immune system and how it changes upon treatment in never-smoker NSCLC patients. By understanding the immune system response in these patients, they can create new clinical trials tailored to this unique patient population that will optimize the immune system response to cancer.

Cancer, Lung Cancer, Oncology, Johns Hopkins University, Science, Research scientist Scientists, Medicine, Researcher,