Robert Yarchoan

Robert Yarchoan (born 1950) is a medical researcher who played an important role in the development of the first effective drugs for AIDS. He is the Chief of the HIV and AIDS Malignancy Branch in the NCI and also coordinates HIV/AIDS malignancy research throughout the NCI as Director of the Office of HIV and AIDS Malignancy (OHAM).

Dr. Yarchoan was raised in Oceanside, New York and graduated from Amherst College in 1971. He subsequently received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Minnesota and a fellowship in Immunology in the Metabolism Branch of the NCI. After completing his training he joined the laboratory of Dr. Samuel Broder. In 1991 he was appointed to be a Section Chief of the Medicine Branch and in 1996 he named chief of the newly formed HIV and AIDS Malignancy Branch. Dr. Yarchoan was also appointed to be the first director of the NCI Office of HIV and AIDS Malignancy (OHAM) in 2007, which supervises all HIV/AIDS and AIDS malignancy research within the NCI.

Along with his colleagues Drs. Samuel Broder and Hiroaki Mitsuya in the National Cancer Institute (NCI), he co-developed the first effective treatments for HIV/AIDS. With his colleagues, he conducted the first clinical trials of zidovudine (AZT), didanosine (ddI), zalcitabine (ddC), and lamivudine (3TC). These trials were the first to demonstrate that administration of anti-retroviral drugs could reverse the declines in CD4 cells and immunologic impairment caused by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Dr. Yarchoan also conducted the first trials of combination anti-HIV therapy.

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