Matthew D Park

Matthew is a sixth-year M.D./Ph.D. student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he is now completing his medical studies. Originally from the Washington, D.C. metro area, Matthew completed his undergraduate studies at Georgetown University, where he majored in biophysics and minored in Science, Technology, and International Affairs (STIA) at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. During undergrad, he researched the neutrophil response to staphylococcal toxins during the early phase of the inflammatory response and the utility of circulating, cell-free DNA as a clinical readout of adverse events associated with cancer therapy. These experiences ignited an interest in cancer immunology, which he further developed and nurtured under the mentorship of Miriam Merad, M.D., Ph.D., at the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai. There, he completed his doctoral work, studying the function of monocyte-derived macrophages in suppressing the NK cell response to tumorigenesis, the mechanisms underlying the generation of these immunosuppressive myeloid cells via emergency myelopoiesis, and the cellular basis for how these processes are exacerbated during hematopoietic aging to drive cancer initiation and progression. Matthew’s doctoral work has led to the design and implementation of several clinical trials, testing the use of the allergy medication dupilumab, the arthritis drug anakinra, and the reverse transcriptase inhibitor lamivudine in the early management of high-risk lung nodules and early-stage lung cancer. His studies have also been published in Science, Nature, and Cell, among others, and have served as the foundation for ongoing work on tissue-resident macrophages, aging, and clonal hematopoiesis.