Douglas R. Lowy, M.D., was officially named deputy director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in September 2010.  From April 2015 until October 2017, he served as NCI’s acting director and was instrumental in establishing and leading many of the institute’s key initiatives. Dr. Lowy received his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine and trained in internal medicine at Stanford University and dermatology at Yale University. His research interests include the biology of papillomaviruses and the regulation of normal and neoplastic cell growth. The papillomavirus research is carried out in close collaboration with John Schiller, Ph.D., with whom he has coauthored more than 150 papers over the past 30 years. In the 1980s, Drs. Lowy and Schiller studied the genetic organization of papillomaviruses and identified the oncogenes encoded by the virus. More recently, they have worked on papillomavirus vaccines and studied the papillomavirus life cycle. Their laboratory was involved in the initial development, characterization, and clinical testing of the preventive virus-like particle-based HPV vaccines that are now used in three FDA-approved HPV vaccines.

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