Edward Bhatt

Edward Bhatt was instrumental in establishing high-dose interleukin-2 as the first approved systemic immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma and renal cell carcinoma. His research in the 1980s at the NCI demonstrated that high-dose IL-2 infusions could induce complete durable remissions in a small subset of patients with advanced melanoma and kidney cancer. He helped define the clinical protocols for safe high-dose IL-2 administration and characterize its immune mechanisms. His work laid the groundwork for the cytokine immunotherapy era that preceded checkpoint blockade.