Minkyung Hong Song, PhD

Program Official

Dr. Song fosters, manages, oversees and analyzes the NCI portfolio of multidisciplinary, translational, clinical, and reverse-translational research grants and cooperative agreements on: Clinical and preclinical studies of chemotherapy, immunotherapy, cellular therapy, gene therapy, viral therapy, vaccines, surgery, or their combinations, and associated correlative studies; and Development and validation of clinical assays for monitoring responses to therapies, acquired resistance, adaptive immunity, and recurrence of cancer. Dr. Song currently serves as an NCI Program Contact for several notices of funding opportunity (NOFOs), including those for: extramural-intramural collaborative research at the NIH Clinical Center; and Cancer Immune Monitoring and Analysis Centers and Cancer Immunologic Data Center Network. She co-led several Cancer Moonshot NOFOs for implementing the Blue Ribbon Panel Recommendation on Cancer Immunotherapy Translational Science Network. Dr. Song has participated in several Planning Committees for Workshops, including the recent one on In Vivo Engineering of Immune Cells for Cancer Immunotherapy. She is currently an NIH Extramural Ambassador for the NIH Office of Extramural Research. She was a contributing member of multiple trans-NCI or trans-NIH Teams, including: Early-Stage Investigators Activities Committee; Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization Immunotherapy Category FingerPrint Working Group; Adverse Drug Reactions Working Group; Rigor and Reproducibility Focus Group; Pharmacogenomics Research Network; Translational Research Interest Group; and Roadmap/Common Fund Molecular Libraries Probe Production Centers Network. Dr. Song has received various Awards and Certificates, including several NCI Director's Awards of Merit, the NIH Director's Award, and a Certificate for completing the NIH Senior Leadership Program.

After earning her Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Minnesota Medical School, Dr. Song was a Visiting Post-Doctoral Fellow and a Senior Staff Fellow in the NIH Intramural Research Program for more than 5 years. Then, she was an Interdisciplinary Regulatory Review Scientist in the Food and Drug Administration for 9 years prior to joining the NCI DCTD in 1997 as a Program Director.