Kim Nichols, M.D.

Kim Nichols, M.D., serves as the director of the Cancer Predisposition program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. This unique program is one of few in the nation that provides specialty oncology care and genetic counseling to children with heritable predisposition to cancer. As director, she is responsible for the vision and development of the program, as well as initializing new clinical and basic research initiatives.
Dr. Nichols has recently established a new research protocol at St. Jude that will use cutting edge next generation sequencing technologies to comprehensively examine the genetic makeup of tumor and normal tissues. The goal of this research is to identify how childhood cancers form and to determine whether genetic information provided by next generation sequencing can help physicians predict how tumors will respond to treatment. Ultimately, Nichols and her colleagues plan to incorporate next generation sequencing into clinical practice with the goal of improving patient outcomes by developing personalized approaches to cancer care.
In addition to her work at St. Jude, Nichols holds an executive board membership for the Histiocyte Society, where she received the Nezelof Prize in Basic Research. In 2011, she was elected into the Society for Pediatric Research. Nichols received her M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine and completed her residency and clinical fellowship in Hematology Oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Massachusetts.