Catherine Bollard Appointed Associate Center Director for Translational Research and Innovation at GW Cancer Center

Catherine Bollard, MBChB, MD, FRACP, FRCPAD

Catherine Bollard, MBChB, MD, FRACP, FRCPA

Catherine Bollard, MBChB, MD, FRACP, FRCPA, will be bringing the latest cell therapies from the laboratory into clinical application in her new role as associate center director for translational research and innovation at The George Washington University (GW) Cancer Center. Bollard is currently a professor of pediatrics and microbiology, immunology, and tropical medicine at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

A distinguished hematologist and immunotherapist, Bollard has dedicated her research efforts to fighting cancer and other inflammatory diseases in pediatric populations. She will continue working in her position at Children’s National Health System where she is the director of the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research at the Children’s Research Institute and is a member of the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation.

She also directs the Cell Enhancement and Technologies for Immunotherapy (CETI) Program at GW and Children’s National, with a focus on the development of immunotherapies for cancers and viral infections such as HIV.

“Dr Bollard is a leader in the immunology and immunotherapy space and has made internationally-recognized discoveries, leading to novel technologies in pediatric cancer,” said Eduardo M. Sotomayor, MD, director of the GW Cancer Center, adding “she will help us translate these discoveries to the adult population we treat.”

Before completing a postdoctoral fellow at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas, Bollard attended Otago Medical School in her native New Zealand. After working for a time in both London and New Zealand, she then joined Children’s National from the Baylor College of Medicine where she was a professor of pediatrics, medicine, and immunology and the director of the Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Center Pediatric Lymphoma Program.

Bollard is an influential academic with numerous credits to her name. She is the immediate past president of the International Society of Cellular Therapy and is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Lymphoma Steering Committee of the National Cancer Institute and the Cellular Tissue and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee at the FDA.

Bollard has an interest in improving outcomes for patients who receive hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. She has served as the principal investigator for clinical trials assessing the treatment and prevention of viral infection after stem cell and cord blood transplantation utilizing donor-derived virus-specific cytotoxic T-cells.

An associate editor for the journalsBloodandCytotherapy, Bollard has also published over 100 peer-reviewed papers. Additionally, she is credited as authoring several book chapters, reviews and commentaries, mostly focused on her specialty of novel cellular therapies. She sits on the editorial boards for bothThe Journal of Bone Marrow TransplantationandThe Journal of Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplant. 

Bollard’s responsibilities will include the development of a comprehensive research program for immunology and immunotherapy. She will bring novel therapies into clinical application for adult patients and will guide future development of all translational programs at the GW Cancer Center.