Soki Kashima, MD, PhD

Soki Kashima is a urologic surgeon, and a physician-scientist at Akita University School of Medicine in Japan. He graduated from Akita University, and then he received his PhD in Medicine from Akita University Graduate School of Medicine, completing his doctoral research in the Laboratory of Immunology at Kyoto University under the mentorship of Prof. Hiroshi Kawamoto. In doctoral research, he studied the efficacy of antigen-specific T cell therapies derived from iPS cells for renal cell carcinoma, using both in vitro and in vivo (orthotopic xenograft models in mice) models. After his PhD, he has continued his research and clinical work as Assistant Professor at Kyoto University and Akita University with mentorship from Prof. Osamu Ogawa, Prof. Takashi Kobayashi and Prof. Tomonori Habuchi. He has an extensive research skillset in analyzing immune cell function and phenotype, measuring cytotoxicity of T cells, and in patient-derived xenograft mouse models. In the BraunLab, he is using immunogenomic and functional approaches to dissect the tumor microenvironment and understand mechanisms of immunotherapy efficacy in renal cell carcinoma.