Team

Dr. O’Shea served as the Scientific Director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Intramural Research Program for 20 years and continues to serve as a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Molecular Immunology and Inflammation Branch at NIAMS. He also served as acting director of the NIH Center for Regenerative Medicine and chair of the NIH COVID-19 Candidate and Technologies Portal. He discovered numerous aspects of the JAK-STAT pathway, including identifying the tyrosine kinase JAK3 and demonstrating its role in the pathogenesis of severe combined immunodeficiency, along with other genetic autoimmune and autoinflammatory disorders. Dr. O’Shea and colleagues at the NIH elucidated multiple aspects of the roles of STATs in immune cell differentiation, including innate lymphoid cells and Th1, Th2, and Th17 cells. His laboratory has employed deep sequencing to understand the epigenetic regulation of lymphoid differentiation and the role of STATs in these processes. Dr. O’Shea was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and as a Master of the American College of Rheumatology and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Association of Immunologists. Dr. O’Shea was awarded two U.S. patents related to Janus family kinases and the identification of immune modulators, and he was elected to the National Academy of Inventors. He was also awarded the U.S. Public Health Service Physician Researcher of the Year Award, Lee C. Howley Sr. Prize for Research in Arthritis, Irish Immunology Society Public Lecture Award, Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine, International Cytokine and Interferon Society Millstein Prize, American Association of Immunologists–Steinman Award for Human Immunology Research, and American Society for Clinical Investigation Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine.