David Williams, MD

Dr. Williams is the president of Dana-Farber Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. He also serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Chief of Hematology/Oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is also working as Leland Fikes Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. His major research interests are – study of blood stem cell biology, blood formation, leukemia and the treatment of genetic blood diseases using gene therapy. Dr. Williams is originally trained in hematology/oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. During his fellowship research at the MIT Cancer Center and the Whitehead Institute, he developed techniques that allowed for the introduction of genes into murine and human hematopoietic cells. Those techniques are still commonly utilized today. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed manuscripts and textbook chapters.

Representative Publications:

Sickle cell disease pain: II. Predicting health care use and activity level at 9-month follow-up

Pain drawings and sickle cell disease pain

Mathematical modeling of erythrocyte chimerism informs genetic intervention strategies for sickle cell disease

Lineage-specific BCL11A knockdown circumvents toxicities and reverses sickle phenotype

Sickle cell disease in children and adolescents: the relation of child and parent pain coping strategies to adjustment