Curtis Jamison Perry, MD, PhD

Dr. Perry is a physician-scientist specializing in the treatment of genitourinary cancers. Since his doctoral training in cancer immunology, he has been fascinated by the opportunity to combine rigorous mechanistic approaches in immunobiology with interrogation of clinical samples from cancer patients to advance our understanding of immunology in cancer and ultimately improve cancer care.

Dr. Perry completed a joint MD-PhD degree as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program at Yale University and stayed at Yale for internal medicine residency and hematology/oncology fellowship training. Dr. Perry conducted his PhD research with Dr. Susan Kaech, investigating mechanisms of lymphoid and myeloid immune responses in mouse models of melanoma and chronic viral infection. He helped develop a melanoma mouse model YUMMER1.7 which has been widely studied with immunotherapies.

To advance his opportunities to elucidate mechanisms in cancer immunology, he joined the Ishizuka lab, and with support from the ASCO Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award, uses cutting-edge single-cell techniques to examine immune cells from patient tumors, lymph nodes and blood. He learned how to develop biomarkers in investigator-initiated clinical trials at the 2024 “Vail” ASCO/AACR Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop. In support of his goals, he received the K12 ImmunoOncology Training Program award in September 2025.