Diana Bianchi, MD
Director, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Head, Prenatal Genomics and Therapy Section for the Medical Genetics Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute
Watch the Recording
About the Speaker
Diana Bianchi, MD, oversees the research on pediatric health and development, maternal health, reproductive health, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and rehabilitation medicine, among other areas. These efforts include managing a staff of approximately 1,400 people and an annual budget of approximately $1.5 billion. Dr. Bianchi serves as an ambassador and spokesperson for NICHD.
Dr. Bianchi's laboratory seeks to advance understanding of fetal and placental biology through sequence analysis of nucleic acids that circulate within the pregnant woman's blood. The information acquired is used to improve counseling and prenatal care. The laboratory has a long-term commitment to developing prenatal treatments for Down syndrome. They hypothesize that giving safe and efficacious medications to pregnant women who are carrying fetuses diagnosed with trisomy 21 will reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, promote the production of new fetal nerve cells, and lead to improvement in brain growth, all of which will ultimately improve brain function, learning and memory after birth. Read more.
Dr. Bianchi received her B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine. She completed her residency training in pediatrics at the Children's Hospital, Boston, and her postdoctoral fellowship training in both Medical Genetics and Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at Harvard. She is board-certified in all three specialties and is a practicing medical geneticist with special expertise in reproductive genetics and genomics. Dr. Bianchi's translational research focuses on two broad themes: prenatal genomics with the goal of advancing noninvasive prenatal DNA screening and diagnosis and investigating the fetal transcriptome to develop new therapies for genetic disorders that can be given prenatally.
Dr. Bianchi has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles, and she is one of four authors of Fetology: Diagnosis and Management of the Fetal Patient. This book won the Association of American Publishers award for best textbook in clinical medicine in 2000. The second edition was published in April 2010 and is in its third printing. It has been translated into Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish.
Dr. Bianchi is recognized widely for her leadership roles. She spent 23 years at Tufts Medical Center, where she was the founding executive director of the Mother Infant Research Institute, as well as the Natalie V. Zucker Professor of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Bianchi also was the vice chair for Pediatric Research at the Floating Hospital for Children, Boston. From 2011 through 2015, she served on the National Advisory Council of NICHD. She is currently editor-in-chief of the international journal Prenatal Diagnosis and is a past president of the International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis and the Perinatal Research Society. She is a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Human Genetics and a former council member of both the Society for Pediatric Research and the American Pediatric Society. She was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) in 2013.
Dr. Bianchi has received several major lifetime achievement awards. The Colonel Harland D. Sanders Lifetime Achievement Award in Genetics, given in 2017 by the March of Dimes, recognized her pioneering work on maternal and fetal cellular communication, including its significance in disease and diagnostics, and for exploring treatments of fetal disorders. The Maureen Andrew Award for Mentoring, given in 2016 by the Society for Pediatric Research, recognized her commitment to mentoring the next generation of clinician-scientists. The Landmark Award, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, was given in 2015 in recognition of her research and contributions to genetics and newborn care. The 2017 J.E. Wallace Sterling Lifetime Achievement Award recognized Dr. Bianchi’s achievements as an alumna of Stanford University School of Medicine. The Pioneer Award was given in 2019 by the International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis to acknowledge her transformative contributions to the practice, science and profession of prenatal diagnosis and therapy. In 2020 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam that recognized her contributions to the field of fetal cell microchimerism and noninvasive prenatal testing using DNA sequencing of fetal and placental DNA fragments.
Accreditation
In support of improving patient care, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.
Cincinnati Children’s designates the live activity for a maximum of 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.