Dr. Qing Yi is a trained medical immunologist with over 25 years of experience as a well-funded and published researcher. He is one of the leading investigators in the fields of tumor immunology and immunotherapy in multiple myeloma and other cancers.

Since arriving in the US in 1998, Dr. Yi has been awarded, as the PI, 9 R01s from NCI, 1 project and 1 core grant in the MDACC Myeloma SPORE (P50), 4 R01-type translational grants from the LLS, 4 Senior Researcher Awards from the MMRF, 2 K99/R00 grants (as the mentor), and numerous intramural and industry grants. Dr. Yi and colleagues have published more than 160 peer-reviewed research articles, with 45 being in top-tier journals with an impact factor of greater than 10.

Prior to his current appointment as Associate Director of the Houston Methodist Cancer Center, Dr. Yi had faculty appointments at Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and Karolinska Hospital and Institute, Sweden.

For the past two decades, Dr. Yi's laboratory has been working on the following research:

(1) characterizing myeloma- and tumor-specific T cells and their subsets and examining their functions in relationship to myeloma tumor cells using both in vitro and in vivo approaches

(2) identifying novel myeloma-associated antigens and better methods for immunotherapy

(3) investigating the cross-talk between the tumor microenvironment and the immune system in malignancy

(4) clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of immunizing patients with idiotype or dendritic cell-based vaccines

(5) exploring immunotherapies using novel myeloma antigens such as DKK1 in multiple myeloma. Our recent research focuses on (a) developing novel therapeutic monoclonal antibodies for myeloma and other cancers, (b) identifying T-cell subsets that have potent anti-tumor effects after adoptive transfer, and (c) identifying tumor microenvironment components that induce tumor drug resistance.

A commentary written by Dr. Edgar Schmitt and Dr. Tobias Bopp in J Clin Invest (122:3857-3859) comments that “During the last two decades the laboratory of Qing Yi has significantly contributed to our current understanding of potential immunotherapies in human malignancies by describing the role of DCs – and particular T cells – in multiple myeloma.”