Dr. Kieren Marr will step down from her role as vice chair for innovation in healthcare implementation and retire as faculty in the Division of Infectious Diseases on December 31, 2021. She will become cofounder and chief medical officer of Sfunga Therapeutics, a new Deerfield-backed antifungal company and continue her work with the Johns Hopkins spin-off company, MycoMed.
Dr. Marr is a professor of medicine and oncology. She joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 2008 after 15 years on the faculty at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center of the University of Washington. She has been recognized by many honorary medical societies including the Association of American Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation, which she also led as president during her career at JHU. Her research led to the establishment of MycoMed Technologies, which focuses on the development of diagnostics to enable early treatment of fungal infections in medically immunosuppressed people.
As the inaugural medical director for the JHU Transplant and Oncology ID Program, Dr. Marr built a world-class academic center of excellence for transplant and oncology infectious diseases. Since 2008, the program has grown from one faculty member to nine, becoming one of the nation’s best in both clinical research and clinical care of solid organ transplant and oncology patients. She has recruited and supported outstanding faculty and built a program that trains fellows from around the world, including the first combined transplant and oncology advanced fellowship collaboration between JHU and NIH.
In 2015, Dr. Marr was named Associate Vice Chair for Innovation and Commercialization, then Vice Chair for Innovation in Healthcare Implementation. In her vice chair roles, she has worked with faculty and the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures to foster a culture of innovation in the department and create pathways to turn the scholarly activity of scientists and clinician-scientists into products that touch our patients through technology licensing and/or entrepreneurial activities.
We would like to thank Dr. Marr for her leadership over the past few years as well as her commitment to our department since she joined the faculty in 2008. In her new roles she will continue to focus on development of antifungal products that help our patients. We are very lucky that she will continue her involvement and collaboration with the Department of Medicine and JHU investigators as well as her activities at MycoMed, which is preparing for commercial launch of its first diagnostic test. With gratitude, we wish her the best in her new role.
