
Marcel R.M. van den Brink, MD, PhD
Bone Marrow Transplant Specialist
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About Me
- Head, Division of Hematologic Malignancies
- Alan N. Houghton Chair
I am a medical oncologist and physician-scientist who specializes in bone marrow transplants as a therapy for people with blood cancers, such as leukemia. With this treatment, also called a hematopoietic stem cell transplant, chemotherapy and radiation are used to kill the cancer in the patient’s blood and bone marrow. Then, new marrow or blood stem cells are given to help healthy blood cells grow back. In the clinic, I take care of patients undergoing these transplants. In the laboratory, I study questions related to this treatment approach and to immunotherapy for cancer in general.
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My research is currently focused on two areas:
1) Studying the role that microorganisms living in the intestine (microbiota) play in patients who are undergoing bone marrow transplants or are those receiving cancer immunotherapy.
2) Developing strategies to help the body rebuild the immune system after bone marrow transplantation. The focus of this work is in enhancing the activity of the thymus, a small organ in the chest that makes certain types of immune cells. This research is being translated into clinical trials that are currently ongoing at MSK.
From 2004 to 2008, I served as Chief Attending of the Adult Bone Marrow Transplant Service. I have been Head of the Division of Hematologic Oncology at MSK since 2008. I’m also a professor of Medicine and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College and hold a joint appointment in the Immunology and Transplantation Program of the Sloan Kettering Institute. I am Co-Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at MSK and Chairman of the Board of DKMS, an international nonprofit organization devoted to bone marrow donor registration.
In 2010, I started the Susan and Peter Solomon Divisional Genomics Program, which focuses on targeted therapy approaches for patients with blood cancers. This program was instrumental in the development of the first genomic profiling test for hematological malignancies called FoundationOne™ Heme.
A bone marrow transplant specialist is a doctor with special training in bone marrow transplants.
My Specialties
- Blood & Marrow Stem Cell Transplantation
Education
- MD, University of Leiden
Residencies
- Internal Medicine - Leiden University Hospital
- Internal Medicine - Duke University Medical Center
Awards and Honors
- Physician Scientist Award, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1996)
- Amy Strelzer Manasevit Scholar Award, National Marrow Donor Program (1999)
- Damon Runyon Scholar Award, Cancer Research Fund (2001)
- Scholarship from the V Foundation for Cancer Research
- Elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (2004)
- Elected to the Association of American Physicians (2013)
- Immunology Letters Lecture Award, European Federation of Immunological Societies (2014)
- Delete Blood Cancer Award, DKMS (2015)
- Till and McCulloch Lectureship Award, Stem Cell Network (2015)
- Jaap de Graeff Award, Leiden University (2015)
- Foreign member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020)
Fellowships
- Hematology/Oncology - Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
- Medicine - Harvard Medical School
- Pediatric Oncology/Immunology - Dana Farber Cancer Institute
Board Certifications
- Medical Oncology
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Contact and Location
Dr. van den Brink sees patients at one location.
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Colleagues
Doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering work as teams, with specialists from all different areas. This allows us to consider all your needs together, and to give you the best possible care.
Clinical Trials

Memorial Sloan Kettering's doctors and scientists are constantly developing new treatments for cancer. MSK is typically running hundreds of clinical trials at a given time.
You may be able to participate in a clinical trial even if you are new to MSK. Search our online directory to find trial information and see more about who can participate.
Search clinical trialsResearch and Publications
Visit PubMed for a full listing of Dr. van den Brink’s journal articles. Pubmed is an online index of research papers and other articles from the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.
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Disclosures
Doctors and faculty members often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community.
MSK requires doctors and faculty members to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public.
Marcel R.M. van den Brink discloses the following relationships and financial interests:
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DKMS
Fiduciary Role / Position; Professional Services and Activities -
Garuda Therapeutics
Professional Services and Activities -
GlaxoSmithKline
Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated) -
Juno Therapeutics
Intellectual Property Rights
-
Pluto Immunotherapeutics
Equity; Professional Services and Activities -
Seres Therapeutics
Equity; Intellectual Property Rights; Professional Services and Activities -
Smart Immune SAS
Professional Services and Activities -
ThymoFox, Inc.
Equity
If you’re a patient at MSK and would like more information about your doctor’s external relationships, please talk with your doctor.
The information published here is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.
This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2022 through disclosure submission in spring 2023). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.
Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at [email protected].