Credit: Fred Hutch
PHOTO CAPTION: Dr. Paul Nghiem, affiliate investigator of the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutch, and the George F. Odland Endowed Chair in Dermatology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, is a senior investigator on the clinical trial that led to yesterday’s fast-track FDA approval of the checkpoint inhibitor Bavencio (avelumab) for the treatment of patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma. Nghiem was also the senior author on the Lancet Oncology article that preceded the approval. He is a leading expert on MCC and a pioneer of immunotherapy for the disease.