James N. Kochenderfer is an American physician-scientist. He is currently a Senior Investigator at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. [1]
Kochenderfer obtained a bachelor's degree in chemistry and a M.D. at West Virginia University. [2] He completed an Internal Medicine residency at Vanderbilt University followed by an Oncology Fellowship at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. He completed a Hematology Fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He then undertook a period of post-doctoral training in cancer vaccines and adoptive T-cell therapy at the National Cancer Institute. [3] This training was conducted in the laboratories of Dr. Ronald E. Gress and Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg. Following these fellowships, Dr. Kochenderfer held positions as an Assistant Clinical Investigator and then an Investigator at the National Cancer Institute. In 2020, Dr. Kochenderfer was granted tenure and assumed his current position of Senior Investigator. [4]
Kochenderfer is an investigator and author in the field of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies for cancer. [5] [6] Dr. Kochenderfer's research has focused on developing new CAR T-cell therapies for hematologic malignancies such as leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. [7] [8] [9] Dr. Kochenderfer was the lead author of the first paper to report antigen-specific activity of CAR T cells targeting CD19. [10] Dr. Kochenderfer and coworkers conducted early studies that demonstrated the effectiveness of anti-CD19 CAR T cells against lymphoma. [11] CAR T cells targeting CD19 have gone on to become U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved treatments for lymphoma and leukemia. [12] Dr. Kochenderfer and coworkers were also the first to report CAR T cells targeting B-cell maturation antigen. [13] CAR T cells targeting BCMA are an FDA-approved treatment for multiple myeloma. [14] Dr. Kochenderfer contributed to early development of the first FDA-approved CAR T-cell therapy for multiple myeloma. [15] [16]