Maureen O’Brien, MD, MS

Dr. O’Brien is the Medical Director of the Leukemia/Lymphoma Program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and an Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and conducted her residency in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital. She completed her fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford where she studied mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance in the laboratory of Branimir Sikic, MD before transitioning to a career focused on clinical research. At Stanford, she completed a Master’s degree in Epidemiology and studied late effects of cancer therapy including second malignancies and cardiac toxicity.

Dr. O’Brien joined the faculty at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in 2009 with a research focus on novel therapeutics for hematologic malignancies, and has subsequently been a PI or co-PI on multiple therapeutic trials for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), including serving of the Co-Chair of the current Children’s Oncology Group phase 3 trial for newly diagnosed high-risk B-ALL. She is an active member of the COG ALL and AML committees as well as the Therapeutic Advances in Childhood Leukemia (TACL) consortium. Her current research interests include the incorporation of novel immune-based therapies in the treatment of acute leukemias as well as interventions to reduce short and long-term toxicities of treatment.