Paul Nghiem

Dr. Paul Nghiem is the George F. Odland Endowed Chair and Head of the Division of Dermatology at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Dr. Nghiem leads a multi-disciplinary team focused on improving the management of Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC). Studies led by his team resulted in the first two FDA-approved therapies for MCC, as well as a blood test that is now routinely used clinically to detect recurrent MCC earlier and more reliably than scans.

He attended Harvard College and then obtained MD and Ph.D. degrees at Stanford University where he studied Cancer Biology and Immunology.

He did his medical internship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston followed by a Dermatology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. He worked on UV-DNA damage responses as a Howard Hughes Post-Doctoral Fellow with Stuart Schreiber in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. In 2003, he started his own lab at the Cutaneous Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.