Nai-Kong V. Cheung, MD, PhD

Pediatric Oncologist

Titles

Enid A. Haupt Chair in Pediatric Oncology

Clinical Expertise

Pediatric Oncology; Neuroblastoma and Developmental Tumors of Childhood; Immunotherapy; Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation

Contact and Location

646-888-2313 Office Phone
Speaks English

New York City

Find a Convenient Location

Memorial Sloan Kettering has locations throughout New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, and Westchester. These locations offers many services, including screening, chemotherapy, and medical testing.

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About Me

Education

MD, Harvard Medical School; PhD, Harvard Medical School

Residencies

Pediatrics - Stanford University

Fellowships

Pediatric Hematology/Oncology - Stanford University

Board Certifications

Pediatrics; Pediatric Hematology-Oncology

I am a pediatric oncologist at MSK Kids who specializes in immunologic approaches to diagnose and treat pediatric cancers. My main focus is the treatment of neuroblastoma, a tumor arising from primitive cells of the sympathetic nervous system which primarily affects young children.

My colleagues and I have developed therapies that combine multiple approaches, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, isotretinoin (a chemical cousin of vitamin A), and more importantly, targeted therapy with a form of immune treatment called monoclonal antibodies. These strategies have dramatically extended the lives of our patients with metastatic neuroblastoma. Today, more than 50 percent of these patients treated at MSK Kids survive the disease, compared with fewer than 5 percent in the 1980s. In fact, immunotherapy has now become the standard of care for patients with metastatic neuroblastoma. Moreover, localized neuroblastoma is now considered a curable cancer, and many patients with this stage of the disease are cured with surgery alone.

Our team is also actively involved in early-phase clinical trials of promising therapies, including biologic agents and vaccines, natural killer cells, and combinations of these novel approaches with conventional treatments. We hope that effective new strategies for neuroblastoma will serve as a model for the treatment of other metastatic solid tumors in children and adolescents.

In the laboratory, we are evaluating markers of “minimal residual disease” (low levels of cancer remaining after treatment), which may predict the risk of early metastasis and recurrence, and discovering novel treatment targets in tumors. We are also engineering the next generation of antibodies to make them more potent and “human-like,” as well as arming these antibodies with either T lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) or radioactive substances to diagnose and treat neuroblastoma. We believe many of these innovative antibodies may be useful for treating other solid tumors in adolescents and even those in adults.

We are assessing new drugs that may overcome the resistance that neuroblastoma often develops after prolonged chemotherapy. We are also trying to unearth the genetic and biochemical features of neuroblastoma to determine if a tumor’s profile at the time of diagnosis, metastasis, or relapse can tell us how aggressive the tumor may be, and what kind of therapy may be most effective. Our major thrust continues to be the translation of novel therapies from the laboratory to the clinic, where they may help our patients.

The team of experts at MSK Kids treats more patients with neuroblastoma than any other institution in the world. Using treatment approaches based on the findings of rigorous medical research, we are able to achieve better outcomes for our patients. Families who come to us benefit from the dedication and compassion of individuals from various disciplines who share the vision and the desire to eliminate this devastating disease.

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.

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Clinical Trials

Clinical Trials Investigated by Dr. Cheung
Molecular Characterization of Neuroblastic Tumors and Clinical Outcome

Find a Clinical Trial for You

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.

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Research and Publications

View Dr. Cheung's Lab

Souweidane MM, Kramer K, Pandit-Taskar N, Zhou Z, Haque S, Zanzonico P, Carrasquillo JA, Lyashchenko SK, Thakur SB, Donzelli M, Turner RS, Lewis JS, Cheung NV, Larson SM, Dunkel IJ. Convection-enhanced delivery for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma: a single-centre, dose-escalation, phase 1 trial. Lancet Oncol. 2018 Jun 15. pii: S1470-2045(18)30322-X. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(18)30322-X.

Kushner BH, Cheung IY, Modak S, Basu EM, Roberts SS, Cheung NK. Humanized 3F8 anti-GD2 monoclonal antibody dosing with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor in patients with resistant neuroblastoma – A Phase 1 Clinical Trial. JAMA Oncol. 2018 September 20. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2018.4005

Hoseini SS, Guo HF, Wu ZH, Hatano MN, Cheung NKV. A potent tetravalent T-cell-engaging bispecific antibody against CD33 in acute myeloid leukemia. Blood Advances 2(11):1250-1258, 2018

Wu ZH, Guo HF, Xu H, Cheung NKV. Development of a tetravalent anti-GPA33/anti-CD3 bispecific antibody for colorectal cancers. Mol Cancer Ther. 2018 Aug 6. pii: molcanther.0026.2018. doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.MCT-18-0026.

Ahmed M, Lopez-Albaitero A, Pankov D, Santich BH, Liu H, Yan S, Xiang J, Wang P, Hasan AH, Selvakumar A, O’Reilly RJ, Liu C, Cheung NKV. TCR-mimic bispecific antibodies targeting LMP2A show potent activity against EBV malignancies. JCI Insight. 2018 Feb 22;3(4). pii: 97805. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.97805.

Wu ZH, Cheung NKV. T cell engaging bispecific antibody (T-BsAb): from technology to therapeutics. Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Pharmacol Ther. 2018 Feb;182:161-175

Cheal SM, Fung EK, Patel M, Xu H, Guo HF, Zanzonico PB, Monette S, Wittrup KD, Cheung NKV, Larson SM. Curative multi-cycle radioimmunotherapy monitored by quantitative SPECT/CT-based theranostics, using bispecific antibody pretargeting strategy in colorectal cancer. Journal of Nuclear Medicine 58(11):1735-1742, 2017.

Hoseini SS, Dobrenkov K, Pankov D, Xu XL, and Cheung NK. Bispecific antibody does not induce T-cell death mediated by chimeric antigen receptor against disialoganglioside GD2. Oncoimmunology. 2017;6(6):e1320625.

Lopez-Albaitero A, Xu H, Guo HF, Wang LL, Wu Z, Tran H, Chandarlapaty S, Scaltriti M, Janjigian Y, de Stanchina E, and Cheung NK. Overcoming resistance to HER2-targeted therapy with a novel HER2/CD3 bispecific antibody. OncoImmunology 2017 10;6(3):e1267891. doi: 10.1080/2162402X.2016.1267891. eCollection 2017.

Xu H, Guo HF, Cheung IY, Cheung NK. Antitumor efficacy of anti-GD2 IgG1 is enhanced by Fc glyco-engineering. Cancer Immunol Res 4:631-638, 2016.

Zhao Q, Ahmed M, Tassev DV, Hasan A, Kuo TY, Guo HF, O’Reilly RJ and Cheung NK. Affinity maturation of T-cell receptor-like antibodies for Wilms tumor 1 peptide greatly enhances therapeutic potential. Leukemia;29(11):2238-2247, 2015.

Zhao Q, Ahmed M, Guo HF, Cheung IY, and Cheung NK. Alteration of Electrostatic Surface Potential Enhances Affinity and Tumor Killing Properties of Anti-ganglioside GD2 Monoclonal Antibody hu3F8. Journal of Biological Chemistry 290:13017-13027, 2015.

Ahmed M, Cheng M, Zhao Q, Yehuda G, Cheal SM, Guo HF, Larson SM, and Cheung NK. Humanized Affinity-Matured Monoclonal Antibody 8H9 Has Potent Anti-Tumor Activity and Binds to FG Loop of B7-H3. Journal of Biological Chemistry 290(50):30018-30029, 2015.

Larson SM, Carrasquillo JA, Cheung NK, Press O. Radioimmunotherapy of human tumours. Nature Reviews Cancer 15:347-360, 2015.

Xu H, Cheng M, Guo HF, Chen Y, Huse M, Cheung NK. Retargeting T cells to GD2 pentasaccharide on human tumors using bispecific humanized antibody. Cancer Immunol Res. 2015 Mar;3(3):266-77.

Cheung NK and Dyer MA. Neuroblastoma: developmental biology, cancer genomics and immunotherapy. Nature Reviews Cancer 13:397-411, 2013.

Publications on PubMed

Visit PubMed for a full listing of Dr. Cheung’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.

Nai-Kong V. Cheung discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

Abpro Inc
Intellectual Property Rights; Ownership / Equity Interests; Provision of Services
Alexs Lemonade Stand Foundation
Provision of Services
Biotec Pharmacon
Intellectual Property Rights

Eureka Therapeutics Inc
Ownership / Equity Interests; Provision of Services (uncompensated)
Japanese Society of Hematology
Provision of Services (uncompensated)
Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc.
Intellectual Property Rights; Ownership / Equity Interests

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, 2020 through disclosure submission in spring 2021). 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 ecoi@mskcc.org.

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