Dr. William G. Wierda is a professor and center medical director for the Department of Leukemia at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Wierda earned his PhD in 1992 and MD in 1993 from University of Health Sciences at Chicago Medical School and his post-graduate education in internal medicine was at Duke University. This was followed by a fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at University of California at San Diego, where he was trained under the mentorship of Dr. Thomas Kipps. Dr. Wierda’s particular research interests in CLL are prognostic factors and developing prognostic models in CLL, immune and gene therapies for patients with CLL, developing chemoimmunotherapy regimens and treatment strategies for relapsed and refractory patients with CLL.
Dr. Wierda is head of the CLL section in the Department of Leukemia, where he is directing the clinical and translational efforts in CLL and low-grade lymphoproliferative diseases. Dr. Wierda is also the director of the clinical core and clinical research of the CLL Research Consortium (CRC), a multicenter PO1 project headed by Dr. Thomas Kipps at UCSD. In his role, Dr. Wierda is directing and coordinating CLL-related clinical research activities at the participating sites, including Mayo Clinic, The Ohio State University, UCSD, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Long Island Jewish Hospital, as well as MD Anderson Cancer Center. For the past several years he has served on the NCCN Lymphoma Panel providing leadership and recommendations for CLL treatment in the NCCN guidelines. He has published many articles in high-impact peer-reviewed journals on various clinical and translational aspects of CLL and drug development and given numerous lectures at national and international scientific meetings.