David R. Bickers
Senior Member
Dr. David R. Bickers has been the Carl Truman Nelson Professor and Chair of the department of Dermatology at the Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York since 1994. He received an A.B. degree in Classics (Pre-Medical) from Georgetown University in 1963 and the M.D. degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1967. After an internship in Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa Hospitals, and two years in the United States Air Force, he was a resident in Dermatology at the Skin and Cancer Unit of the New York University Medical Center beginning in 1970. Thereafter he completed a NIH-sponsored research training fellowship at the Rockefeller University Hospital in New York City working with the late Professor Alvito Alvares in the laboratory of Professor Attallah Kappas. During that time, he was a Reynolds Scholar in Clinical Medicine and also held a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor of Dermatology at Columbia until 1977 when he became Chair of the department of Dermatology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Early in his career, Dr. Bickers conducted studies that led to the discovery of cytochrome P-450-dependent xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes in mammalian and human skin and showed that these enzymes are involved in the initiation of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) including basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma by environmental carcinogens. More recently he has studied the role of sunlight in inducing these types of tumors utilizing a mechanism-driven targeted approach to cancer chemoprevention designed to lead to clinical trials in populations susceptible to skin cancer. This strategy resulted in the successful use of a targeted drug in human subjects with Gorlin syndrome, a dominantly inherited disorder in which affected individuals develop dozens to hundreds of basal cell carcinomas of the skin. This syndrome is associated with overactivity of the Sonic Hedgehog signaling pathway and he has successfully completed clinical trials in these patients showing that orally administered vismodegib, a potent inhibitor of Sonic hedgehog signaling, substantially reduces their tumor burden.
Dr. Bickers is a past president of the Dermatology Foundation and the American Board of Dermatology, a past chair of the General Medicine “A” Study Section of the National Institutes of Health and a past
Secretary-Treasurer and President of the Society for Investigative Dermatology. He is a past-president of the Medical Board of the New York Presbyterian Hospital. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He is an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Dermatology, the German Dermatological Society, the Austrian Dermatological Society and the Society for Investigative Dermatology. He is a former Vice-Chair for Medicine and Health of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Beirut in Lebanon and Chairs its Committee for Vision 2020 at its Medical Center.
