H Jean Khoury, MD, FACP

Research Interests

Dr. Khoury’s research focuses on drug development in Leukemia and Myelodysplastic Syndromes, understanding genomic abnormalities in leukemia, development of cost-effective practice models, and  transplant outcome analysis.

Dr. Khoury conducted several leukemia and bone marrow transplant clinical trials, including pivotal trials that led to approval of drugs such as imatinib, dasatinib, and nilotinib. He also conducted studies that elucidated the impact of modulating antigen presentation using hydroxychloroquine on the prevention of acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease. He is developing, through phase 1 clinic trials,   inhibitors of  cyclin D kinase, aurora kinase, BCR-ABL, VEFGF, P38, spindle kinases, and broad-spectrum kinases in patients with refractory leukemia and MDS. 

Dr. Khoury was awarded the Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholarship which permitted to establish  the Hematological Disorders Tissue Bank at Emory. This bank, currently housed in his laboratory, was  established in 11/2006 and contains now annotated germline and somatic  samples from more than 800 patients with various hematological disorders. Correlative studies are being conducted using simultaneous peripheral blood and marrow cells, serum, plasma, and cerebrospinal fluid samples collected at diagnosis, remission and at the time of relapse. 

Using a specialized software he designed and developed, Dr. Khoury instituted models of cost-effective care across the inpatient and outpatient services at Emory. These models are in lining with future healthcare reforms currently planned and will likely serve as benchmarks in this field.

In collaboration with the Center for International Bone Marrow Transplant Research, Dr. Khoury conducted clinical trials investigating impact of specific drugs on outcomes of allogeneic stem cell transplantation. These drugs include G-CSF, imatinib, rituximab, and modern anti fungal agents.