Monte Shaheen, MD

Monte Shaheen, MD, is a professor in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio and the director of the melanoma and translational immunotherapy program at Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is board-certified in both hematology and oncology, focusing on melanoma and other cutaneous cancers.

He has extensive experience in treating melanoma and other skin cancers. He was part of the team that conducted initial work on the revolutionary immunotherapy combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab to treat advanced melanoma. This regimen changed the predicted outcome of this disease from being uniformly lethal into a curable disease for a good portion of patients. He has also contributed to the approval of adjuvant immunotherapy for melanoma and the introduction of novel checkpoint inhibitors such as the new lag3 antibody relatlimab. Most recently, he contributed to the efforts that established neo-adjuvant immunotherapy as a potential new standard of care for locally advanced melanoma cases.

Dr. Shaheen is a physician-scientist with clinical and laboratory research efforts in carcinogenesis, genome instability and the ubiquitin pathway. He obtained his medical degree from Damascus University in Syria and completed his fellowship in hematology-oncology at Indiana University School of Medicine. His care philosophy is delivering comprehensive and expert care in collaboration with his patients.