Catherine Meyers, M.D.

Director, Office of Clinical and Regulatory Affairs

Catherine M. Meyers, M.D., is the Director of NCCIH’s Office of Clinical and Regulatory Affairs (OCRA), which plays a major role in the planning, coordinating, and monitoring of the clinical research program. She and her staff serve as a resource for NCCIH’s program staff and clinical investigators to facilitate safe implementation of NCCIH-funded clinical studies. In addition, OCRA oversees NCCIH-appointed Data and Safety Monitoring Boards and ensures regulatory compliance for NCCIH-initiated projects, including compliance with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations.

As NCCIH plays a major role in leadership of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory, Dr. Meyers is also a lead scientist for the Collaboratory. This Common Fund program is a 5-year effort to conduct pragmatic clinical trials in partnership with clinical investigators, patients, and health care systems in the United States.

Dr. Meyers earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Chicago and received her M.D. from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago. She completed postgraduate residency training in internal medicine at the University of Chicago (Michael Reese Hospital) and a clinical nephrology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She then completed a research fellowship in renal immunology at the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1992, she joined the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania with an appointment in the Department of Internal Medicine, Renal-Electrolyte and Hypertension Division. Dr. Meyers’s research program focused on characterizing mechanisms of immune-mediated kidney injury.

Prior to her 2009 arrival at NCCIH, Dr. Meyers had devoted nearly a decade to work focused on clinical research of end-stage kidney disease. After a 3-year tenure at the FDA, where she provided oversight for trials of products for extracorporeal therapies, Dr. Meyers joined NIH in 2002 as a Senior Scientific Advisor within the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), where she was the Director of Renal Inflammatory Programs within the Kidney, Urology, and Hematology Division. She also worked on several NIH projects, including the NIH Transplantation Research Coordinating Committee, and was a co-chair of the NIDDK Clinical Studies Working Group.

Dr. Meyers’s research interests include autoimmune mechanisms of disease and vascular inflammation, as well as the ethics of clinical research oversight. She has authored more than 100 research articles and other scientific publications. She is a Fellow of the American Heart Association, and a long-standing member of its Council on the Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Donald B. Martin Teaching Award from the University of Pennsylvania, an FDA Honor Award for her work in dialysis products oversight, and NIH Director’s Awards for her role in the development of the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory and for her leadership of the NCCIH/OCRA process for oversight of clinical research.