Nina Bhardwaj – Candidate for the Nominating Committee of AACR

The voting for the 2025 AACR Annual Election is now open, where members will vote for the next President-Elect, Treasurer, five Board Members, and four members of the Nominating Committee.

This year, Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD is a candidate for the Nominating Committee of AACR.

Dr. Nina Bhardwaj is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

She also serves as the Director of the Immunotherapy Program, Medical Director of the Vaccine and Cell Therapy Core Facility, and holds the Ward Coleman Chair in Cancer Research.

Before her current role, Dr. Bhardwaj was a tenured professor at New York University School of Medicine, where she directed the Tumor Vaccine Program and served as Medical Director of the Vaccine and Cell Therapy Core Facility.

She was also the co-director of the Medical Scientist Training Program.

Earlier in her career, she held academic positions at Harvard Medical School and Weill Medical College/Cornell Medical Center, where she advanced through ranks from Instructor to Associate Professor.

Dr. Bhardwaj’s work has focused on developing innovative immunotherapies and cancer vaccines to improve treatment outcomes.

Dr. Bhardwaj’s research focuses on the immunobiology of dendritic cell (DC) subsets, specifically their developmental pathways, associated receptors, and the antigen presentation mechanisms that drive anti-tumor immunity.

She is particularly interested in how these innate immune cells can be harnessed to enhance cancer immunotherapy, including through direct modulation of DCs within tumors using immune modulators. Her work also explores DC-based vaccination strategies and the development of DC-targeted vaccines.

Dr. Bhardwaj investigates the cross-talk between DCs and other innate immune cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME), aiming to identify regulatory pathways that could be manipulated to boost immune responses.

A key area of her research is cancer antigen discovery, with a focus on shared neoantigens for the development of “off the shelf” vaccines.

Additionally, she examines how DC biology in the TME influences anti-cancer immunity and explores innovative immune approaches, particularly in combination with checkpoint therapies, to improve cancer treatment outcomes.

Dr. Nina Bhardwaj has received numerous honors and held significant leadership roles within the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). She is currently a member of the Asian/AANHPI Task Force (2023-present) and the AACR Immuno-Oncology (IO) Ad Hoc Committee (2023-present).

Dr. Bhardwaj also serves as an organizing committee member for the Second JCA-AACR Precision Cancer Medicine International Conference (2023).

Previously, she chaired the Satellite Educational Symposia Committee (2021-2022) and was a key member of several other AACR committees, including the AACR-Cancer Research Institute Lloyd J. Old Award in Cancer Immunology Committee, where she served as chair from 2017-2018. Additionally, she has been on the Board of Directors (2021-2024) and was co-chair of the Annual Meeting Program Committee (2019-2020).

Dr. Bhardwaj has been an invited speaker at multiple AACR Annual Meetings, presenting on topics such as “Making Science Count for Patients: From T-Cell Signaling to CTLA-4 Approval” (2019) and “Dendritic Cell-targeted Vaccines Personalized Therapies: Neoantigen Discovery and Vaccination” (2018).

She has also served as senior editor for the AACR journal Cancer Immunology Research since 2014 and chaired the Cancer Immunology (CIMM) Working Group from 2014-2015.

Education

Dr. Nina Bhardwaj earned her MD, PhD, and MS degrees from New York University School of Medicine in 1981, after completing her BA at Wellesley College in 1975.

Her postdoctoral training includes time as a postdoctoral associate at Rockefeller University from 1986 to 1989, followed by a fellowship in rheumatology at the Hospital for Special Surgery and Cornell University School of Medicine from 1984 to 1986.

She also completed her residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, from 1982 to 1984, after her internship there in 1981-1982.

Awards and Honors

– Honoree, CRI/Oliver R. Grace CLIP Investigator (2024)
– Fellow, SITC Class of Fellows of the Academy of Immuno-Oncology (2023)
– Recipient, European Society for Medical Oncology’s (ESMO) Immuno-Oncology Award (2022)
– Recipient, AAISCR Lifetime Achievement Award (2022)
– Recipient, Outstanding Achievement Award, Society of American Asian Scientists in Cancer Research (2021)
– Recipient, Society for Immunology of Cancer (SITC) Team Science Award (2020)
– Recipient, Jacobi Medallion Award, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai (2020)
– Recipient, Solomon Berson-Rosalyn Yallow Society Lectureship Award (2019)
– Member, Board of Scientific Counselors, Vaccine Research Center, NIH (2016-2018)

Interviews with Nina Bhardwaj

Cancer Precision Medicine Retreat – Session 2: Nina Bhardwaj – Mount Sinai Genetics and Genomic Sciences (18th September, 2018)

Cancer Immunotherapy: 2023 Research and a Look Ahead with Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD – Cancer Research Institute (16th May, 2023)