John O’Shea MD

John J. O'Shea, M.D., graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Science degree from St. Lawrence University, and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Cincinnati. He then served as an intern and resident in Internal Medicine at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. He came to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1981 for subspecialty training in Allergy and Immunology in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He did additional postdoctoral work in the Cell Biology and Metabolism Branch in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Dr. O’Shea is board certified in Internal Medicine and Allergy and Immunology.

He started his own group in the National Cancer Institute in 1989, and then moved to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) in 1994 as Chief of the Lymphocyte Cell Biology Section of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Branch. He was appointed Chief of the Molecular Immunology and Inflammation Branch in 2002, and became Scientific Director and Director of the NIAMS Intramural Research Program in 2005. Dr. O’Shea also served as Acting Director of the NIH Center for Regenerative Medicine from 2009-2011. Dr. O’Shea is also an adjunct Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. O'Shea has received many awards, including: the U.S. Public Health Service Physician Researcher of the Year Award; the Paul Bunn Award in Infectious Disease; the Lee C. Howley Prize in Arthritis Research; the Irish Society for Immunology Public Lecture Award; a St. Lawrence University honorary degree; Daniel Drake Medal; Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine; and the Milstein Award. He has been the recipient of the National Institutes of Health Director's Award four times (1998, 2008, 2010, 2013). He was elected to the American Association of Physicians, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Medicine. He is also an ISI Web of Knowledge “Highly Cited Researcher”. He received the NIAMS Mentoring Award in 2003, and the NIH “Make a Difference” Office of Equal Opportunity Award in 2006. He was selected for the NYU Honors Lectureship, the Danny Thomas Lecture and more, and in 2015 delivered a Nobel Forum Lecture.

Dr. O’Shea has served on the editorial boards of multiple journals, including: Immunity, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Immunology, and Blood. He has been an invited lecturer at numerous universities and international meetings in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia.

Dr. O'Shea is one of the co-founders of the NIH/Oxford/Cambridge program in Biomedical Science, is a member of NIH-UPENN Immunology Program, and has served as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scholars Advisor.

Dr. O'Shea has authored more than 300 articles. His area of scientific interest is cytokine signal transduction, dissecting the role of Jaks and Stats family transcription in immunoregulation. Dr. O'Shea and his colleagues cloned the tyrosine kinase, Jak3, and demonstrated its role in pathogenesis of severe combined immunodeficiency. Dr. O'Shea was awarded two US Patents related to Janus Family Kinases and identification of immune modulators (7,070,972, and 7,488,808). Dr. O'Shea and colleagues at the NIH identified the role of Stat3 in regulating T cell cytokine production in Job's syndrome. More recently, Dr. O’Shea’s laboratory has employed deep sequencing to understand the epigenetic regulation of T cell differentiation and the role of STATs in these processes.