Richard Childs received his medical degree from Georgetown University then completed his internship, residency, and a Chief Residency in internal medicine at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL followed a fellowship in medical oncology at the NCI and a hematology fellowship at the NHLBI,…
more NIH. He was appointed as a tenure-track investigator in the Hematology Branch of the NHLBI in 1999 and received tenure in 2006. He is currently serving as the Clinical Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. He is also a senior clinical investigator in the Hematology Branch of the NHLBI and a Captain in the United States Public Health Service. Dr Childs’ research has focused on tumor immunology and allogeneic immunotherapy to treat nonmalignant hematological disorders, hematological malignancies, and solid tumors. Dr. Childs was the first to establish the existence of a graft-vs-solid tumor effect mediated by transplanted donor T-cells that could cure patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. This seminal observation defined a new therapeutic application for allogeneic immunotherapy. Subsequently, he characterized the immune mechanisms mediating this graft-vs-solid tumor effect and in novel experiments using allogeneic T-cells from responding patients identified a solid tumor antigen derived from an endogenous retrovirus that is immunogenic in vivo. Translational research conducted in Dr. Childs’ laboratory has also focused on developing novel NK cell-based treatments for cancer.
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