Max H Cohen MD

Summary

• Max H Cohen MD, PhD graduated with honors from Columbia University in New York City and also with honors, from the Harvard Medical School in Boston Massachusetts. During his surgical internship and residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he was awarded the Surgical Scientist grant among his group of residents, which allowed him to pursue studies at the National Institutes of Health on immunity to virus-induced cancers. and to obtain a PhD degree in Microbiology/ Immunology.
  Following completion of his residency he was invited to join the Senior Staff of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, where he worked in the areas of melanoma and immunotherapy. He described a method of removal of metastatic groin lymph nodes while avoiding leg swelling, by removing deep pelvic lymph nodes as part of a concomitant staging laparotomy.
  
  He pioneered the use of the chemical DNCB injected into metastatic melanoma nodules, first as a method for halting the local spread of the nodules and later as a method of producing the first permanent survivors with metastatic cancer, using immunotherapy alone.
  
  He served as Mid-Atlantic co-chairman of a national melanoma protocol committee and was Head of the Melanoma Section of the Washington Hospital Center Cancer Institute. He published long term evidence to show that removal of abnormal pigmented skin lesions could prevent death from new melanomas in high risk patients.
  
  Intravenously administered checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized cancer care for some malignancies. However the methodology has had limited or no success when the patient's tumor deposits have few T lymphocytes, a problem for which Dr. Cohen has proposed studies, in selected circumstances, of concomitant administration of intratumoral DNCB to induce an influx of such intratumoral lymphocytes to attack newly haptenized cancer cells. Cancer prevention and its treatment, especially by immunotherapy, are topics of his publications.