Dr. Kerry Reynolds is a physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She currently serves as the Director of the Severe Immunotherapy Complications Service, in addition to being the Clinical Director for the inpatient cancer services at Mass General Cancer Center.
Dr. Reynolds specializes in the care of hospitalized patients. Under her leadership, the Massachusetts General Cancer Center’s inpatient program evaluates and treats over 4,000 patients each year and serves as a core training experience for Harvard Medical School students, residents, and fellows each year.
After completing her own residency, chief residency at Massachusetts General, and fellowship training in Oncology at Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care, she joined the Harvard Medical School faculty in 2014, where she provides clinical care, supervises and educates trainees, participates in administrative affairs, and conducts research on severe toxicities associated with novel immunotherapy agents.
Her short-term academic and primary research focus is to create a clinical database and tissue collection infrastruction to capture the full national history of immune related adverse events (irAEs), and uncover predictors that will identify patients at highest risk for adverse events associated with immunotherapy, or those destined to be refractory. The overall goal is to characterize these severe clinical presentations, understand the blueprint of cells/molecules driving these clinical presentations, and ultimately develop new therapeutics to improve the treatment of this unique patient population.
Departments, Centers, & Programs:
Clinical Interests:
Treats:
MGH Cancer Center, Bartlett Hall
CHX-1 202
55 Fruit Street
Boston, MA 02114
617-724-0549
Fax: 617-724-7799
Medical Education
American Board Certifications
Note: This provider may accept more insurance plans than shown; please call the practice to find out if your plan is accepted.
We are in the midst of an exciting revolution in the treatment of cancer. By harnessing and enhancing the body’s immune system using novel therapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, we can reduce the amount of tumor burden in patients and, in a subset of patients and cancers, achieve long-lasting remission. However, these therapies are often limited by treatment-induced autoimmune adverse events. They affect nearly every organ system, ranging widely from minor rashes and fevers to severe gastrointestinal, pulmonary, or cardiac complications. Dr. Kerry Reynolds, along with Dr. Chloe Villani, and the Massachusetts General Hospital has taken a lead in this arena by altering our clinical practice model to provide expert multi-disciplinary care by creating the Severe Immunotherapy Complications Service. Importantly, this group is not just involved in the clinical care but they have banded together to set up infrastructure to empower specimen collection and facilitate translational research efforts, in order to understand the mechanisms driving immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Blood/tissue samples are systematically collected in an attempt to develop better therapies to treat autoimmune toxicities while maintaining anti-tumor immunity. The hope is that this will further our understanding of early mechanisms leading to autoimmune diseases and identify novel druggable targets with immunosuppressive potential. The Severe Immunotherapy Complications Service brings together expertise from a variety of clinical divisions and scientists across the institution to coordinate our care and tackle a critical problem facing many cancer patients today.
Selected Publications:
