Chintan Parekh, M.D.

Chintan Parekh, M.D. is an associate clinical professor in the Department of Pediatrics at City of Hope® Cancer Center Duarte. He specializes in treating pediatric leukemia and conducting basic science laboratory research in the fields of T-cell immunotherapy, blood cell development and blood cancers. He chose to focus on pediatric care because of the profound impact that curing cancer has on a young person’s life.

As the director of the Chintan Parekh Lab at City of Hope, Dr. Parekh focuses his research on deciphering the molecular mechanisms driving normal human blood and immune cell development and understanding how errors in these mechanisms result in leukemia. The goals of his research lab are to apply the insights about immune cell mechanisms to the development of more effective anticancer immunotherapies and design new therapies targeting the errors underlying leukemia. Dr. Parekh’s research has revealed biological pathways driving normal human T-cell development.

His lab is currently investigating whether manipulating the activity of these pathways will yield more effective T cell immunotherapies for cancer. His research is funded by R01 grants from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and has resulted in publications in high-impact journals like Nature Immunology and Immunity. Dr. Parekh’s translational research portfolio includes the investigation of mechanisms underlying immune responses in patients via the study of immune cells collected from children and young adults undergoing immunotherapy.

In addition to being a member of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the Society for Pediatric Research, Dr. Parekh is a member of the ASH Scientific Committee for Immunology and Host Defense and has served as a grant reviewer for the NIH and several prestigious cancer research foundations.

After earning his medical degree at the Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College in Mumbai, India, Dr. Parekh completed residencies in pediatrics at Swansea NHS Trust in the United Kingdom and the Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo (now Oishei Children's Hospital) in New York state, followed by a fellowship in pediatric hematology-oncology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Prior to joining City of Hope, Dr. Parekh was an associate professor of clinical pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California.