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 National Cancer Institute (NCI) and also coordinates HIV/AIDS malignancy research throughout the NCI as director of the Office of HIV and AIDS Malignancy.

Education and career Yarchoan was raised in Oceanside, New York. He graduated from Amherst College in 1971 with a degree in biophysics and received his M.D. from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1975. He completed internship and residency training in internal medicine at the University of Minnesota and subsequently trained in immunology in the Metabolism Branch of the NCI. 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 in 2007, which supervises all HIV/AIDS and AIDS malignancy research within the NCI.

Medical and Research Achievements 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.

Personal life Yarchoan is married to Italian–American scientist Giovanna Tosato of the National Cancer Institute, and is the father of physician-scientist Mark Yarchoan of Johns Hopkins University and John Yarchoan.