Jennifer A. Kanakry, M.D.

Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation is a potentially curative therapy for patients with disorders of the blood and immune system. Dr. Kanakry’s research is focused on clinical trials for patients with acquired or inherited disorders of the immune system and patients with hematologic malignancies requiring allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation. Dr. Kanakry’s work studies novel transplant platforms with the aim of improving outcomes for patients by reducing the intensity of transplant, using less than perfectly matched donors, and exploring methods to optimize immune reconstitution and cancer control after transplant. She also investigates viral complications of transplant, including clinical trials of virus-specific cytotoxic T cell therapies.

Dr. Jennifer Kanakry is a Senior Clinician and clinical researcher at the Center for Cancer Research of the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Kanakry received her B.A. (2002) from Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she studied cognitive neuropsychology and biology. She went on to receive her medical degree (2007) from a joint program between Dartmouth College School of Medicine (Hanover, NH) and Brown University School of Medicine (Providence, RI). She completed both her residency training in Internal Medicine (2007-2010) and fellowship training (2010-2013) in Hematology at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her clinical research during fellowship was focused on virus-associated cancers, hematologic malignancies in patients living with HIV, and allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation for lymphoma under the mentorship of Dr. Richard Ambinder. In 2013, she joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins within the Departments of Medicine and Oncology, where she primarily focused on treating patients with diseases that more commonly occur in the setting of immunodeficiency, including lymphoma, disorders of immune dysregulation, and virus-associated lymphoproliferative disorders. In 2015, she joined the Experimental Transplantation and Immunotherapy Branch of the National Cancer Institute as an Associate Research Physician, where she focused her clinical research on optimizing approaches to allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation for hematologic malignancies and immunodeficiencies. In 2017, her clinical trial and patient was one of 4 features in the Discovery Channel docuseries “First in Human” Link: Discovery Documentary First in Human. In 2021, she became the Program Director for the NIH Hematology Oncology Fellowship Program, overseeing one of the largest Heme/Onc fellowship programs in the U.S. Link: NIH Hematology Oncology Fellowship.