John Clifford, Ph.D.

John L Clifford, Ph.D. serves as a Program Director in the CADRG and COR for the PREVENT program. Dr. Clifford joined the CADRG in 2022, following a 26 year research career heading laboratories in both academic and government research environments. He has a background in cancer chemoprevention, preclinical drug development, biomarker discovery and analysis, signal transduction, pain research, burn wound healing, and bioinformatic analysis of systems biological data. His independent research career began as an Assistant Professor at MD Anderson Cancer Center. This was followed by a position as Associate Professor at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport School of Medicine (LSUHSC). From 2011 until joining the NCI he was a Principal Investigator and Deputy Program Manager of the Pain and Sensory Trauma Care Research Team within the US Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC).

Dr. Clifford’s research in the chemoprevention field was focused on understanding the mechanism of action of nuclear retinoid receptor proteins (RARs and RXRs) and the role of STAT3 in the control of cell proliferation and cell survival. This work included the development of several mouse transgenic and conditional knockout models for cancer. While at LSUHSC his research interests expanded to the study of bladder cancer, which included the discovery of a number of bladder precancer biomarkers that can be detected in urine, having the potential for both diagnosis and prognosis in humans. While at the USAMRDC, he directed research projects aimed at improving the wound healing and pain care of service members suffering combat casualties, with a focus on burn injuries. Dr. Clifford has served as grant reviewer on multiple NIH study sections and DoD grant review panels and has published more than 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals.