Scott A. Armstrong, MD, PhD

Scott A. Armstrong, MD, PhD, is Senior Vice President for Drug Discovery and Chief Research Strategy Officer at Dana-Farber, leading institutional research strategy focusing on therapeutic discovery efforts. He is also the David G. Nathan Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Armstrong served as the President of Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center from 2019 to 2025 and was Chairman of the Department of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber from 2016 to 2025. 

Dr. Armstrong was previously director of the Center for Epigenetics Research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Pediatrics at the Weill Cornell Medical College. He earned his medical degree and PhD from University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in 1996. After internship and residency training with the Boston Combined Residency Program (BCRP) at Boston Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital, he completed a hematology/oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s.

The major focus of Dr. Armstrong's career has been on delineating the biology of leukemia and the development of new therapeutic approaches for children and adults with cancer. His research program has focused on the relationship between leukemia and normal hematopoietic stem cells and how chromatin-based mechanisms drive cancer-causing gene expression. Dr. Armstrong’s research program has also driven the development of new therapeutics that target chromatin, and he is actively involved in the development and translation of a number of new small molecule approaches one of which was recently approved by the FDA for the treatment of children and adults with genetically defined subtypes of Acute Myeloid Leukemia.