Priya Kishnani
Priya Kishnani was born in Bombay, India. She received a Bachelor of Medicine-Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree from the University of Bombay, St. Xavier College (India) in 1985. She moved to the United States in 1991 after completing a Pediatric Residency in Mumbai, India. She went on to do a second Pediatric Residency at Duke University Medical Center, and in 1995, she completed a Fellowship in Clinical and Biochemical Genetics at Duke. Shortly thereafter, she joined the faculty at Duke.
Dr. Kishnani has dedicated her career to globally advancing the treatment of Pompe disease, a rare disease affecting the heart and the muscles. Her involvement in designing the first clinical trials for a new treatment of Pompe disease resulted in FDA approval for use of alglucosidase alfa (Myozyme) in 2006.
An expert in designing clinical trials for treatments of rare diseases, she has been a lead investigator on several trials for developing new drugs involving enzyme replacement therapy and small molecules. Her specific expertise is in lysosomal storage disorders, including Pompe disease, Gaucher disease, Fabry disease and mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS) disorders. Her work on treatment strategies, long-term complications and clinical trial results is widely published in journals, textbooks and scientific reviews.
Dr. Kishnani’s current appointments at Duke include a Chen Family Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Chief of the Division of Medical Genetics, and Medical Director of the YT and Alice Chen Pediatrics Genetics and Genomics Center, which focuses on developing new therapies for rare genetic disorders.
She has received several honors including Anna’s Angels Award from the Anna’s Angels Foundation (2012), Christian Pueschel Memorial Research Award from the National Down Syndrome Congress (2010), and North Carolina Best Doctors recognition (2009, 2011-2012)
Interview
This oral history interview was conducted with Dr. Priya Kishnani conducted on December 29, 2010 by Jessica Roseberry.