Dr. David Avigan has been the Director of the Hematologic Malignancy/Bone Marrow Transplant Program at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center since 1998. Dr. Avigan received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and in 1989 completed his M.D. at Yale University School of Medicine. He did his internal medicine and residency training at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center from 1989-1993, and from 1992-93, Dr. Avigan was the Chief Resident of Internal Medicine. From 1993 -1996, Dr. Avigan was a Fellow, and later, Chief Fellow in Hematology/Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

In 1996 he joined the staff at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA, and in 1998 became the Director of the Hematologic Malignancy/Bone Marrow Transplant Program. During his tenure in this position, Dr. Avigan has helped establish an allogeneic transplant program for patients with HLA matched siblings. In 2001, the program was accepted as a transplant site for the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) and a matched unrelated donor (MUD) transplantation program was opened. This new program allowed for transplantation from matched unrelated donors found through NMDP searches of the national and international bone marrow registries.

Dr. Avigan's research focuses on the use of cancer vaccines and the use of potent antigen presenting cells known as dendritic cells fused to tumor cells collected from patients. These fused cells are then reintroduced into the body as a vaccine in an effort to stimulate tumor specific immunity. This work has received international attention based on a series of promising pre-clinical data. Thus far, these vaccine trials have been completed for breast cancer, and studies are currently accruing in melanoma, kidney cancer, and multiple myeloma.