Jerome Elliot Groopman MD

Dr. Jerome Groopman, MD holds the Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and is Chief of Experimental Medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He received his B.A. from Columbia College summa cum laude and his M.D. from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York where he was elected to AOA. He served his internship and residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Following that, his specialty fellowships in hematology and oncology were performed at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Children's Hospital/Sidney Farber Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston. Dr. Groopman was Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the FDA for Biological Response Modifiers and was a member of the Food and Drug Administration's Senior Biomedical Service Credentials Committee. He serves on many scientific editorial boards and has published more than 150 scientific articles. In 2000, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Groopman's research has focused on blood development, cancer, and AIDS. He did seminal work on identifying growth factors that may restore the depressed immune systems of AIDS patients and on treatment for AIDS-related neoplasms, particularly Kaposi's sarcoma and lymphoma. He performed the first clinical trials utilizing recombinant colony-stimulating factors and erythropoietin to augment blood cell production in immunodeficient HIV-infected patients. In addition, he has been a major participant in the development of many AIDS-related therapies including AZT, ddI, ddC, d4T, 3TC, and protease inhibitors. Currently, his basic laboratory research involves understanding how blood and vascular cells grow, communicate, and migrate. He also is studying how viruses cause immune deficiency and cancer, and how infection with the hepatitis C virus results in liver injury.

Dr. Groopman writes regularly about biology and medicine for lay audiences. He has authored numerous editorials on policy issues in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. His first popular book, "The Measure of Our Days," published in October 1997 by Viking Penguin, explores the spiritual lives of patients with serious illnesses, and the opportunities for the fulfillment they sometimes find. This was the basis for the ABC Television series "Gideon's Crossing." In 1998, he became a staff writer in medicine and biology at The New Yorker magazine.