First person profile: Julie Brahmer, MD

Abstract

A strong work ethic modeled after her father, who was a farmer, greased the tracks for Julie Brahmer, MD, and led her toward a career in oncology. She credits hard work for her many accomplishments as a clinician researcher of immunotherapy agents for thoracic cancers.

As a young investigator in her first faculty position at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the early 2000s, she performed research that paved the way for the first immunotherapy agent to receive approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of lung cancer. The drug was nivolumab. Dr Brahmer led the first-in-human trial (phase 1) that showed the potential efficacy of nivolumab in lung cancer and co-led the phase 2 and 3 trials that eventually led to its approval as a second-line treatment for advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).^{1, 2}

Dr Brahmer called it a dream to be a part of developing a new drug for lung cancer. “My dream when starting out in drug development was to take a drug from its first-in-human trials and help it through its development and approval to help our lung cancer patients,” she says. “That dream was realized.”

Her vision was further realized with the subsequent approval of pembrolizumab for the treatment of lung cancer. She was the lead investigator on the KEYNOTE-024 trial, which was the first to show the superiority of pembrolizumab over chemotherapy for patients with previously untreated advanced NSCLC with programmed death ligand 1 expression. This led to the approval of pembrolizumab as a first-line treatment in this setting.^{3, 4}

Thereafter, she mentored younger investigators whose research led to the approval of nivolumab in combination with chemotherapy for even early stages of lung cancer, such as the Checkmate 816 trial for neoadjuvant therapy of resectable NSCLC.

“It is amazing to see the changes in lung cancer treatment over the past 15 years,” she says. “We’re now talking about curing patients with immunotherapy and using it in multiple cancers, all the way from head and neck cancer to esophageal cancer and mesothelioma.”

Dr Brahmer’s leadership roles include serving as the director of the Thoracic Oncology Program and a professor of oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is also a coprincipal investigator of the Johns Hopkins National Clinical Trials Network. She oversees clinical trials of immunotherapies for lung cancer and drug development for thoracic malignancies and focuses on developing treatments for mesothelioma. She also serves as the chair of the Thoracic Cancer Committee of the ECOG–ACRIN National Cooperative Group.

Although hard work drove her younger years, Dr Brahmer now describes her work ethic as working efficiently—a necessary refinement when managing many tasks and juggling multiple leadership roles.

Among these roles, she receives the most satisfaction from mentoring the next generation of researchers. She helps to lead a seminar series and programs for early career investigators in lung cancer, and she co-leads a conference for helping women oncologists, both in academia and in private practice. This fosters equal opportunities in their professions, particularly in advancing to leadership roles.

Her deep satisfaction in mentoring comes from her own gratitude toward those who mentored her. While her father instilled a strong work ethic that aided in her achievements, her mother’s vocation as a nurse inspired her to pursue medicine as a career. The death of her grandfather due to non-Hodgkin lymphoma while she was in high school helped to steer her focus. Dr Brahmer also credits growing up on a farm with keeping her grounded and teaching her “a lot about the ebb and flow of life.”

“There is something about being able to stop and pause, and to acknowledge that life is not about achievements as much as it is about connections you make with folks,” she says.

Her professional mentors gave her the direction and the tools to accomplish her goals. She praises David Ettinger, MD, a thoracic oncologist at the Johns Hopkins University, as an “amazing” mentor for his insights into lung cancer and for helping her to build relationships within the specialty. She also credits other colleagues from the Johns Hopkins University, Drew Pardoll, MD, PhD, and Suzanne Topalian, MD, for asking her to lead the first-in-human trial of nivolumab and for teaching her about cancer immunology.

Dr Brahmer received her medical degree in 1993 at the University of Nebraska Medical Center after earning undergraduate degrees in philosophy and chemistry at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. She completed an internship and residency at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where she advanced to chief medical resident (1996–1997). She accepted a medical oncology fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University, where she has remained throughout the course of her career.

Dr Brahmer’s work has received national and international recognition. In 2024, she received the Paul A. Bunn Scientific Award, which recognizes luminaries in the field of lung and thoracic cancers. Prior awards include the Dr Thierry Jahan “A Breath Away From the Cure” Award, the LUNGevity Face of Hope Award, and the American Society of Clinical OncologyStatesman Award. She holds the Marilyn Meyerhoff Professorship in Oncology within the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.