Barbara Mroczkowski, Ph.D.

Dr. Barbara Mroczkowski has been the Special Assistant to the Deputy for Clinical and Translational Research of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), since 2007. From 1993 to 2007, Dr. Mroczkowski was Group Leader and Director at Pfizer in La Jolla, CA. There she led a productive team of scientists that brought several targeted agents into the clinical setting, many of which received FDA approval. She was part of the team at Agouron Pharmaceuticals that solved the first high resolution crystallographic structure of the VEGFR kinase domain. At Agouron, her team proceeded to launch INLYTA® (Axitinib) and SUTENT®, selective and non-selective small molecule inhibitors of VEGFR kinase domain. She participated in the launch of VIRACEPT®), one of the first protease inhibitors to be approved by the FDA, which is still widely prescribed in combination with reverse transcriptase inhibitors for the treatment of HIV infection. She led the team at Pfizer that was responsible for discovering and developing XALKORI® (Crizotinib).

Dr. Mroczkowski currently oversees NCI’s Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) Program, a program designed to facilitate the progression of novel therapeutic interventions from the private and public sector towards clinical evaluation and registration.

Dr. Mroczkowski is the author of numerous publications in the areas of signal transduction, receptor tyrosine kinases, and novel targeted therapies for solid tumors. Prior to coming to NCI, she served on the faculty of Vanderbilt Medical School from 1983 to 1993. After completing her PhD, her research interests focused on elucidation of EGF/TGF-beta signaling pathways in close collaboration with Dr. Stanley Cohen, Distinguished Professor and Nobel Laureate. She was a scholar of the American Cancer Society.

Education

• Ph.D., Genetics, University of Connecticut