David A. Rizzieri, MD

I focus on developing new therapies for patients with leukemia or lymphoma. I am a member of the Combined International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry Lymphoma Writing Committee and the ALLIANCE (formerly CALGB) Leukemia Core Committee and NCI Leukemia Working Groups. I serve as chair or co-chair of multiple ALLIANCE lymphoma/ leukemia trials, the most recent being the last two national studies for Burkitt’s lymphoma, as well as the current leukemia in under 60-year-olds study. I have led our team’s novel approaches for the care of patients using monoclonal antibodies with non-myeloablative allogeneic therapy to optimize a less toxic regimen for transplant of patients with hematologic malignancies using haplo-identical, as well as matched, donors. This work is currently being extended with post-transplant graft manipulation studies focused on manipulating Natural Killer cell activity. I have led the development of anti-stromal therapy in lymphoma using new antibodies targeting the stromal protein, tenascin, for which a patent is pending, and first in-human studies targeting acute myelogenous leukemia by linking diphtheria to an antibody to the IL-3 receptor (now in phase 3).