Dr. Qing Yi is a distinguished medical immunologist with over 30 years of experience as a highly funded and well published investigator. He is internationally recognized as a leading authority in tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy, with a particular focus on multiple myeloma and related malignancies.

Since arriving in the United States in 1998, Dr. Yi has secured an exceptional record of extramural funding as Principal Investigator, including 13 R01 from NCI, 1 project and 1 core grant in the MDACC Multiple Myeloma SPORE (P50), 4 R01-type translational grants from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), 4 Senior Researcher Awards from the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF), and 3 CPRIT awards (including 1 Established Scholar Award, 1 HIHR, and 1 IIRACT). In addition, he has served as a mentor on 2 K99/R00 awards and has received numerous intramural, foundation, and industry-sponsored grants.

Dr. Yi and colleagues have published more than 198 peer-reviewed publications, 88 of which appear in top-tier journals with impact factors exceeding 10, underscoring the sustained impact and influence of his work on the field of cancer immunology.

Prior to his current role as Associate Director of the Houston Methodist Cancer Center, Dr. Yi held faculty appointments at the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and the 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.”