Assistant Professor
Houston Methodist Neal Cancer Center, Houston Methodist Research Institute
Dr. Qian is an assistant research professor of oncology in the Center for Translational Research In Hematologic Malignancies at The Houston Methodist Research Institute. He received both his DVM and Ph.D. in China. He is a permanent member of Chinese Society for Immunology, recipient of Multiple Myeloma Research Fellows Award from Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, Vivian L. Smith CCIR Award for Outstanding Young Immunologist from MD Anderson Cancer Center and CCF Innovator Awards from Cleveland Clinic.
Over the last 20+ years, His research focuses on the development of novel immunotherapy methods to treat multiple myeloma (MM) and other cancers by using anti-tumor-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and CAR-T cells, identifying new cancer-specific antigens, and developing novel cancer vaccines. He is the author of publications in top-tier journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Communication, Cancer Cell, PNAS, Blood and Journal of Experimental Medicine. He holds international patents and seeks to extend immunotherapy-based cancer treatments globally with collaborators.
He initiated a research project to examine the potential of DKK1 as a universal tumor antigen for immunotherapy in myeloma and published the first work in Blood in 2007. He discovered that DKK1, with the broad expression in myeloma but highly restricted expression in normal tissues, together with its functional roles as an osteoblast formation inhibitor and a potential myeloma growth enhancer, may be an ideal target for immunotherapy in MM. Moreover, he demonstrated that active vaccination using the DKK1-DNA vaccine in the myeloma mouse model protected mice from developing myeloma and effectively treated established myeloma. Furthermore, he has developed DKK1-A2 therapeutic mAbs which can bind specifically on cell surface with DKK1-expressing, HLA-A2+ cancer cells, and demonstrated that the therapeutic mAb and it’s CAR-T cells can kill cancer cells in vitro and in vivo xenograft mouse models.