Dr. Rodgers received his undergraduate, graduate, and medical degrees from Brown University, and performed his residency and chief residency in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital and the Washington University School of Medicine. His fellowship training in hematology was in a joint program of the NIH with George Washington University and the Washington Veterans Administration Medical Center.
In addition, he earned an MBA, with a focus on the business of medicine/science, from The Johns Hopkins University. As a research investigator, Dr. Rodgers is widely recognized for his contributions to the development of the first effective—and FDA approved—therapy for sickle cell anemia. He was a principal investigator in clinical trials to develop therapy for patients with sickle cell disease and also performed basic research that focused on understanding the molecular basis of how certain drugs induce gamma-globin gene expression.
More recently, he and his collaborators have reported on a modified blood stem-cell transplant regimen that is highly effective in reversing sickle cell disease in adults, and is associated with relatively low toxicity.