Profile

Brent Hanks, M.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and Division of Medical Oncology and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University with a dual appointment with the Duke Cancer Institute.   Dr. Hanks completed his medical degree along with a Ph.D. in tumor immunology while in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Hanks went on to complete his internal medicine residency training and his hematology and oncology fellowship training at Duke University.   He now manages a basic and translational research lab focusing on understanding biochemical mechanisms of tumor-mediated immune evasion and immunotherapy resistance in cancer.  In addition to his research efforts, he is also a medical oncologist and manages patients with advanced skin cancers including melanoma and Merkel cell carcinoma.  Using an array of experimental techniques, his labs' research goals are to develop novel strategies to enhance the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitor and vaccine immunotherapy while also developing predictive biomarkers to better guide the management of cancer patients with immunotherapeutic agents.   His labs' current projects include 1) the elucidation of mechanisms by which cancers promote dendritic cell tolerization and immune evasion via metabolic reprogramming including studies on the role of tumor-derived exosomes, 2) investigation and characterization of a novel PD-L1-dependent tumor intrinsic mechanism driving adaptive resistance to checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy, and 3) uncoupling mechanisms promoting checkpoint inhibitor-related side-effects and checkpoint inhibitor efficacy.