Arthur W. Nienhuis ’63

Gene therapy pioneer Arthur W. Nienhuis died Feb. 3, 2021. He was 79.

Nienhuis, a physician-scientist, was an early proponent of gene therapy as a discipline. He was past director and CEO of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and a founder and past president of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT).

Nienhuis was born in Michigan and attended Cornell before moving to Los Angeles to receive his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He completed clinical training in internal medicine before working for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1970. He completed training in pediatric hematology at Boston Children’s Hospital and returned to the NIH in 1973. Over the next two decades he established a bench-to-bedside research program, leading a series of clinical trials demonstrating that fetal hemoglobin expression could be reactivated pharmacologically, laying the groundwork for FDA approval of the first drug to treat sickle cell disease. 

In 1993 he left the NIH to direct St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where he directed an enormous expansion of the facilities and research while continuing his own active research.

He joined with George Stamatoyannopoulos and other gene therapy pioneers to found ASGCT in 1997 and served as its president in 2008. 

He is survived by his wife, Corinne; four children; and multiple grandchildren.