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David Rimm, MD, PhD

Anthony N. Brady Professor of Pathology and Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology)
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Additional Titles

Director, Yale Cancer Center Tissue Microarray Facility, Pathology

Director, Yale Pathology Tissue Services, Pathology

Director, Physician Scientist Training Program, Pathology Research

About

Titles

Anthony N. Brady Professor of Pathology and Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology)

Director, Yale Cancer Center Tissue Microarray Facility, Pathology; Director, Yale Pathology Tissue Services, Pathology; Director, Physician Scientist Training Program, Pathology Research

Biography

David Rimm is the Anthony N. Brady Professor of Pathology in the Departments of Pathology and Medicine (Oncology) at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is the Director of Yale Pathology Tissue Services and the Lab for Quantitative Diagnostics in Anatomic Pathology. He completed an MD-PhD at Johns Hopkins University Medical School followed by a Pathology Residency at Yale and a Cytopathology Fellowship at the Medical College of Virginia. His research lab group focuses on quantitative pathology using the AQUA® technology invented in his lab, and other quantitative methods, with projects related to predicting response and resistance to both targeted and immune- therapy in cancer. His lab is involved in the use of new high-plex methods including digital spatial profiling (NanoString) for new biomarker discovery. He is also interested in translation of assays to the clinic and standardization of those assays for CLIA labs. The work is supported by grants from the NIH, BCRF, and sponsored research agreements from biopharma. He also serves on the CAP Immunohistochemistry committee and multiple scientific advisory boards for biotech and pharma. He is an author of over 500 peer-reviewed papers with an H-index of 120 and 8 patents.

Appointments

Education & Training

Fellow
Medical College of Virginia (1994)
Resident
Yale-New Haven Hospital (1993)
MD
Johns Hopkins University (1989)
PhD
Johns Hopkins University (1989)

Research

Overview

Nearly 100% of Dr. Rimm’s lab efforts are related to cancer. He has largely focused on tissue biomarker research. His most innovative research has involved construction of patient cohorts using the tissue microarray format and the development of methods for quantitative analysis of protein expression on tissue microarrays and whole tissue sections. He has also published extensively in the field of biospecimen science including a series of papers published in Laboratory Investigation, the most popular being cited over 1000 times[2]. His most innovative efforts have been related to automated quantitative analysis of formalin fixed, paraffin embedded tissue.

He and his lab developed the AQUA method of quantitative immunofluorescence that was published in 2002 in Nature Medicine (over 875 citations). This technology attempted to remove the subjectivity from the analysis of immunohistochemistry specimens by using co-localization to define regions of interest, rather than feature extraction of pathologist defined subregions.

More recently, he has extended the quantitative work toward the development of standardized assay for antibody drug conjugate therapies (ADCs).

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Biomarkers, Pharmacological; Breast Neoplasms; Immunohistochemistry; Medical Oncology; Melanoma; Pathology

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of David Rimm's published research.

Publications

Featured Publications

2024

Clinical Trials

Current Trials

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • honor

    Lauren Ackerman Lectureship

  • honor

    Starwood Commitment Award 2004

Clinical Care

Overview

David L. Rimm, MD, PhD, is a pathologist who specializes in biomarker assessment in lung and breast cancer and has dedicated much of his career to improving how cancers can be diagnosed through better diagnostic tests or through discovering new molecular biomarkers. As a medical student, Dr. Rimm so enjoyed puzzling over the origins and process of diagnosing a patient’s disease that a mentor suggested he consider specializing in pathology. “It always seemed like the most scientific area of medicine, where you have time to perform research to improve diagnostics for patients,” Dr. Rimm says.

His natural inclination toward research pushed Dr. Rimm to sub-specialize in cytopathology, a branch of pathology where diagnoses are based on examining very small samples of patient’s tissue at a cellular level.

Clinical Specialties

Pathology; Medical Oncology; Anatomic Pathology; Cytopathology

Board Certifications

  • Cytopathology

    Certification Organization
    AB of Pathology
    Original Certification Date
    1996
  • Anatomic Pathology

    Certification Organization
    AB of Pathology
    Original Certification Date
    1995

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