John Williams III, MD

John Williams, MD, is the director of Reproductive Genetics and a full-time faculty member in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He is also a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. For 30 years, his research has been in the area of first-trimester prenatal diagnosis and screening. Since rejoining the full-time faculty at Cedars-Sinai nearly 20 years ago, Dr. Williams has developed one of the most comprehensive first-trimester prenatal diagnosis programs in the United States. As a pioneer in chorionic villus sampling (CVS), he has performed more than 31,000 of these procedures to date. During the 2015-16 academic year, Dr. Williams performed 546 CVS procedures. Most recently, his research has focused on identification of potential markers of risk for subsequent development of pregnancy complications. Currently, he is building a tissue repository of blood, urine, saliva and chorionic villus samples in patients undergoing CVS. His team has enrolled over 2,300 patients in the repository. Dr. Williams is conducting a study to investigate the relationship between placental genes, vascular growth factors and various markers in the first and early second trimesters, and risk for adverse perinatal outcome, including maternal hypertensive disorders, fetal growth abnormalities, preterm labor and premature rupture of membranes.