Dr. Will Parsons, MD, PhD

Dr. Will Parsons MD, PhD, is a board-certified pediatric oncologist and the Deputy Director of Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Center (Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas). Dr. Parsons’ work has been instrumental in characterizing the genetic landscapes of a variety of pediatric and adult cancers, including the first identification of IDH1 and IDH2 as critical oncogenes in gliomas. His current research primarily focuses on the clinical application of genomic technologies in pediatric cancer care.

Over the past decade Dr. Parsons has served as a principal investigator for seminal studies evaluating the use of clinical sequencing for childhood cancer patients as part of the NHGRI Clinical Sequencing Evidence-Generating Research (CSER) program: the BASIC3 study (2011-2017) for newly diagnosed patients at TXCH and the Texas KidsCanSeq study (2018-2022) for both newly diagnosed and relapsed patients at multiple study sites across the state of Texas. Dr. Parsons has a particular interest in the development and evaluation of molecularly targeted therapies and has a number of leadership roles in this area including serving as the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) study chair for the NCI-COG Pediatric MATCH trial (the first nationwide precision oncology trial for children with relapsed and refractory solid tumors, lymphomas, and histiocytoses) and as a Steering Committee member for the NIH Pediatric Early Phase Clinical Trials Network. Dr. Parsons received his B.A. in chemistry from Princeton University and his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He completed his pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins University and his oncology/neuro-oncology fellowship training at Johns Hopkins and the Pediatric Oncology Branch of the National Cancer Institute.