Dr. David Maloney develops new treatments for patients with lymphomas, leukemias and myeloma as well as other cancers. He is widely recognized as an expert in treating people with these cancers. The focus of his laboratory and clinical research is immunotherapies, which are treatments that can enhance anti-cancer immune responses. One strategy uses immune cell products known as antibodies. Dr. Maloney was instrumental in the development and testing of rituximab, the first antibody-based cancer drug on the market. This drug has transformed the treatment of certain leukemias and lymphomas. Dr. Maloney also is developing genetically engineered immune cell therapies, which are called CAR T-cell therapies, for various cancers. He is the first medical director for cellular immunotherapy and the Bezos Family Immunotherapy Clinic at Fred Hutch, where these strategies are being used to treat patients.
At Fred Hutch, Dr. Maloney's primary clinical focus is developing and testing new immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. He is also an expert on blood-forming (hematopoietic) stem cell transplantation (HCT) in using a matched donor’s (allogeneic) or a patient’s own (autologous) stem cells in treatments for patients with hematologic malignancies. Recognizing that standard pre-transplant regimens are too toxic for many patients, Dr. Maloney and Fred Hutch colleagues are evaluating approaches that use antibodies to deliver radioactivity or cancer-killing drugs directly to tumors. They have also developed a less toxic, “reduced intensity” (nonmyeloablative) regimen that can more safely provide long-term remissions for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) and myeloma after allogeneic HCT.