Andrew Young Koh, MD $$

Andrew Y. Koh, MD, is the Director of Pediatric Cellular and ImmunoTherapeutics Program (CITP) at Children’s Health℠ and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology at UT Southwestern. He specializes in treating cancer, immune deficiencies, bone marrow failure syndromes, and blood disorders including sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia.  

To me, there is no greater opportunity to make a difference than to cure a child of a potentially fatal illness. It is a privilege and an honor.

After receiving his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, Dr. Koh completed a pediatrics residency at Children’s Hospital of Boston, where he also performed his Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology fellowship training.

“As with most people who are drawn to medicine, I wanted to make a difference and help people,” Dr. Koh says. “To me, there is no greater opportunity to make a difference than to cure a child of a potentially fatal illness. It is a privilege and an honor.”

Dr. Koh researches how gut microorganisms affect host immune responses and how this affects the development of infections, the autoimmune complication graft-versus-host disease  (a complication that can happen when transplanted immune cells attack a patient's own cells), and anti-tumor immune responses. 

In 2015, Dr. Koh was the senior author of an article in Nature Medicine showing how to reduce the presence of a fungus that causes infections and complications in cancer and stem cell transplantation (SCT) patients, decreasing mortality by 50 percent.   More recently, Dr. Koh’s group was among the first to show that cancer patients who respond favorably to a type of cancer immunotherapy known as immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy have a distinct gut microbiome signature.  He is now developing a novel gut microbiota therapy to enhance cancer immunotherapy efficacy (which is the basis for two patents, a startup company, and recent NIH funding).

During medical school, Dr. Koh took two years off to pursue musical interests. It is something he still enjoys when he’s not working. Dr. Koh plays guitar and piano, sings, writes music and has a recording studio in his home.