Kenneth C. Anderson, MD
Kraft Family Professor of Medicine,Harvard Medical School
Chief, Division of Hematologic Neoplasia
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, Massachusetts
Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School. Thereafter he trained in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and completed hematology, medical oncology, and tumor immunology training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is the Kraft Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Lebow Institute for Myeloma Therapeutics and Jerome Lipper Center for Multiple Myeloma, as well as vice chair of the Joint Program in Transfusion Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Over the past three decades, Dr. Anderson has focused his laboratory and clinical research studies on multiple myeloma. He has developed laboratory and animal models of the tumor in its microenvironment, which has allowed for both identification of novel targets and validation of novel targeted therapies, then rapidly translated these studies to clinical trials. Highlights of his contributions to science and medicine include: discovery of the first plasma cell reactive monoclonal antibodies; development of an immunophenotyping model for diagnosis and treatment of B-cell malignancies; pioneering novel methods to improve safety and efficacy of autografting and allografting in myeloma; characterizing the signaling cascades whereby cytokines mediate myeloma cell growth, survival, and drug resistance in the bone marrow microenvironment; using oncogenomics and developing in vitro and in vivo models to both identify novel targets and validate therapies targeting the myeloma cell and its bone marrow milieu; translating these preclinical studies to the bedside in derived phase I-III clinical trials; and establishing a new treatment paradigm using novel therapies targeting the tumor cell, tumor-host bone marrow interaction, and bone marrow microenvironment to overcome drug resistance and improve patient outcome in myeloma. Most importantly, his team led both preclinical and clinical trials of the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib and the immunomodulatory drug lenalidomide, culminating in the rapid FDA approval of these agents for treatment of myeloma and markedly improving patient outcome. His paradigm for identifying and validating targets in the tumor cell and its milieu has already provided novel therapies that have transformed myeloma therapy, and offers great promise to improve patient outcome in hematologic malignancies and solid tumors as well.
Dr. Anderson serves as chair of the NCCN Multiple Myeloma Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee; as a Cancer and Leukemia Group B principal investigator; on the board of scientific advisors of the International Myeloma Foundation; on the board of directors and chair of the Scientific and Technology Advisory Board of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation; as well as on the board of directors and chair of the Steering Committee of the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium. He has had long-term RO-1, PO-1, and SPORE NIH funding. His numerous awards include the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Research Scientist Award in 1999; the 2001 Charles C. Lund Award of the American Red Cross Blood Services; the 2003 Waldenstroem’s Award for research in plasma cell dyscrasias; the 2004 Johnson & Johnson Focused Giving Award for Setting New Directions in Science and Technology; the 2005 Robert A. Kyle Lifetime Achievement Award; the 2007 American Association for Cancer Research Joseph H. Burchenal Award for Clinical Research; the 2007 ROFEH Distinguished Service Award for providing compassionate patient care internationally; and a 2007 Champion in Advocacy Award by the American Society of Hematology. He was named editor-in-chief of Clinical Cancer Research in 2007. In 2008 he received the Dameshek Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Hematology from the American Society of Hematology and the Celgene Award for Career Achievements in Clinical Hematology. He was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens in 2009. In 2010 he was named an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor and was elected into the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and the Royal College of Physicians (UK).
Ruemu E. Birhiray, MD
CEO, Indy Hematology Education, Inc.
Partner and Vice President,
Hematology Oncology of Indiana
Indianapolis, IN
Ruemu E. Birhiray, MD, is an attending physician in medical oncology, hematology, and hematopoietic cell transplantation at Hematology Oncology of Indiana. Dr. Birhiray received his medical degree from the University of Benin in Benin City, Nigeria. After completing his internal medicine residency at Columbus Hospital in Chicago, he completed a postgraduate fellowship in bone marrow transplantation at The Johns Hopkins University and another fellowship in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health.
Current projects for which Dr. Birhiray is principal investigator include reduced intensity allogeneic transplantation in hematologic malignancies and a trial of interferon A, CHOP, and rituximab therapy in advanced-stage follicular lymphoma.
A member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Hematology and the American Medical Association, Dr. Birhiray has published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Leukemia, Gene Therapy, and Therapeutic Apheresis.
Charles Schiffer, MD
Professor of Oncology and Medicine,
Head, Multidisciplinary Leukemia/Lymphoma Team,
Director, Fellowship Program, Division of Hematology/Oncology
Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI
Charles Schiffer, MD, is Professor of Oncology and Medicine,
Head, Multidisciplinary Leukemia/Lymphoma Team, and Director of Fellowship
Program, Division of Hematology/Oncology at Wayne State University. He received
his MD and his residency training in internal medicine from New York University
School of Medicine.
He has nearly 20 years of faculty and leadership experience
at Wayne State University, including various roles with Karmanos Cancer
Institute. Prior to Detroit, he held several chief and director responsibilities
with the University of Maryland Cancer Center, as well as the National Cancer
Institute, in Baltimore, MD.
His research has centered on leukemia biology and treatment
and platelet transfusion therapy. Dr. Schiffer has been honored with multiple
community, educational and clinical awards, locally and nationally, throughout
his career.
Richard W. Childs, MD
Bethesda, Maryland
Rear Admiral (RADM) Richard Childs, M.D., Assistant U.S. Surgeon General, is the Clinical Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) Division of Intramural Research (DIR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and is the Section Chief of the Laboratory of Transplantation Immunotherapy in the NHLBI.
RADM Childs graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1987 and Georgetown University Medical School in 1991. He completed his internship, residency, and a Chief Residency in internal medicine at the University of Florida in Gainesville followed by fellowships in Medical Oncology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Hematology at the NHLBI. RADM Childs was appointed as a tenure-track investigator in the Hematology Branch of the NHLBI in 1999 and received tenure in 2006, when he was appointed Senior Clinical Investigator and Chief of the Section of Transplantation Immunotherapy.
For 20 years, RADM Childs has served as an officer in the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps at the NIH in the NHLBI as a physician-scientist advancing public health through medical research. RADM Childs was appointed Clinical Director of the NHLBI in 2013. The mission of the NHLBI DIR is to conduct cutting-edge research on heart, lung, blood diseases, and cancer to discover, develop, and deliver new diagnostics and therapeutics. As NHLBI’s Clinical Director, he directs and oversees the entire clinical research portfolio of the institute’s intramural research division, which is one of the largest and most clinically active institutes within the NIH. From December 2014 through March 2015, RADM Childs deployed to Monrovia Liberia as part of the United States Ebola Crisis response in West Africa, where he served as the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and helped expand the supportive care capabilities of the unit by setting up its blood bank and X-ray capabilities.
In his role as a tenure-track and subsequent tenured medical researcher in the NHLBI, he has conducted bench-to-bedside studies that have shed scientific insight into cancer biology. RADM Childs’ research has focused on allogeneic stem cell transplantation and tumor immunology to treat aplastic anemia, hematological malignancies, and solid tumors. He was the first to establish the existence of a graft-vs-solid tumor effect mediated by transplanted donor T-cells that could cure patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Subsequently, his group characterized the immune mechanisms mediating this graft-vs-solid tumor effect and in novel experiments using allogeneic T-cells from responding patients identified a solid tumor antigen derived from an endogenous retrovirus that is immunogenic in vivo. Translational research conducted by members of his lab has focused on targeting the human immune system against kidney cancer and as well as to develop novel NK cell-based strategies to prevent GVHD and to treat advanced cancers. RADM Childs maintains an extremely robust laboratory and research bone marrow transplant program, has performed hundreds of experimental stem cell transplants at the NHLBI, and has published over 190 original research papers in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, Nature Medicine, and Nature.
RADM Childs was elected into the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) in 2009, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the NIH Director’s Scientific Medal Award, the NIH Distinguished Clinical Teacher Award and the United States Commissioned Corps Outstanding Service Medal and Distinguished Service Medal, all for research that has improved the field of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
Stephen Ansell, MD
Professor of Medicine
Chief, Lymphoma/Myeloma Service
Head, Lymphoma Transitional Research Laboratory
Roswell Park Cancer Institute
Buffalo, New York
Myron S. Czuczman, MD, is professor of medicine, chief of the Lymphoma/Myeloma Service, and head of the Lymphoma Transitional Research Laboratory at Roswell Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. Dr. Czuczman earned his medical degree from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. He completed his internship and residency training at Cornell’s North Shore University Hospital/Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Program in Manhasset, New York, and completed a medical oncology/hematology and a senior research fellowship in hematopoietic cancer immunochemistry at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Dr. Czuczman’s research interests focus on monoclonal antibodies either alone or in combination with other agents in the treatment of lymphoma, evaluating novel target-specific molecules active against lymphoma in the clinic and laboratory, and studying the mechanisms-of-action and resistance pathways involving monoclonal antibodies currently used in lymphoma therapy.
Dr. Czuczman is a member of the American Association of Cancer Research, the American Society of Hematology, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. He also serves on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Lymphoma Guidelines Panel, the NCCN non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Outcomes Database Panel, and is a cadre member of the Lymphoma Committee of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) national cooperative group.
Dr. Czuczman has authored or coauthored more than 350 journal publications, book chapters and abstracts. He is a journal reviewer for the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cancer, Clinical Cancer Research, Blood, Cancer Investigation, Annals of Hematology, Cancer Research, and American Journal of Hematology.
Craig Kessler, MD
Professor of Medicine and Pathology
Section Chief, Hematology
Georgetown University
Dr. Craig Kessler is professor of medicine and pathology and section chief of hematology at Georgetown University, where he also directs the Coagulation Laboratory. A graduate of Tulane School of Medicine, Dr. Kessler received his specialty training in hematology and oncology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. An international expert in the area of disorders of coagulation, Dr. Kessler has a particular interest in hemophilia. He also has expertise in the treatment of hematologic malignancies.
John P. Leonard, MD
Professor of Medicine and Pathology
Section Chief, Hematology
Weill Cornell Medical College
Dr. John P. Leonard received his BA from Johns Hopkins University and MD from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He completed internal medicine residency training, where he was chief resident, and was a fellow in the division of hematology at New York Hospital—Cornell Medical Center. He is an attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, the Richard T. Silver Distinguished Professor of Hematology and Medical Oncology and associate dean for clinical research at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he is also director of the hematology/oncology clinical research program and chief of the lymphoma/myeloma service. Dr. Leonard serves on the editorial boards of Blood and Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Noelle Frey, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Department of Medicine
Perelman School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania
Noelle Frey, MD, is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Perelman
Center for Advanced Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
She received her MD from Columbia University, and her MS in Clinical
Epidemiology & Biostatistics from University of Pennsylvania. Her clinical
interests are leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, lymphoma, multiple myeloma
and allogeneic stem cell transplantation.
Dr. Frey’s research interests include early phase clinical
trial design and translational research for subjects with hematologic
malignancies and subjects undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Among
her active research projects are the establishment of a peripheral blood tissue
bank and clinical database for subjects undergoing allogeneic stem cell
transplantation; Phase I/II clinical trial using single agent eltrombopag for
patients with acute myelogenous leukemia, and Phase I/II clinical trial using
single agent TL32711 (a smac mimetic) for patients with acute myelogenous
leukemia.
Sonali Smith, MD
Associate Professor, Section of Hematology/Oncology
Director, Lymphoma Program, The University of Chicago (Chicago)
Dr. Sonali M. Smith is an expert in the care and treatment of adults with all types of Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She has a special interest in new agents for lymphoma, as well as stem cell transplantation and its role in improving the survival of patients with relapsed lymphomas.
An active researcher, Dr. Smith is involved in the development of promising agents for patients with non-Hodgkin and Hodgkin lymphoma. She is principal investigator on a number of innovative clinical trials. Many of the trials incorporate the collection of tumor and blood samples to study the effects of treatment on cancer cells through collaborative laboratories.
Richard M. Stone, MD
Director, Adult Leukemia Program
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Attending Physician
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts
Richard M. Stone, MD, is director of the Adult Leukemia Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he earned his medical degree. Dr. Stone completed his internship and residencies in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he was designated chief medical resident. Dr. Stone trained as a fellow in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Dr. Stone cares for patients with acute and chronic leukemias, myelodysplasia, and myeloproliferative disorders. Dr. Stone conducts clinical and translational research with the goal of deriving better outcomes for patients with these disorders. His laboratory research focuses on the mechanism of leukemic cell differentiation, with the ultimate goal of producing new cancer therapies.
Dr. Stone’s articles, which are primarily devoted to leukemia and related topics, are published in Blood, the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature Genetics, and the New England Journal of Medicine, among others. He serves as vice-chair of the Leukemia Committee of the National Cancer Cooperative Trials Group, CALGB. Dr. Stone is chair of the Medical Oncology Board of the American Board of Internal Medicine and serves as chairman of the Medical Advisory Board for the International Aplastic Anemia and Myelodysplastic Syndrome Foundation, a patient advocacy group. He is a recipient of the American Cancer Society Clinical Career Development Award, the National Institutes of Health Clinical Investigator Award, Upjohn Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research, and the NIH FIRST Award.
Martin S. Tallman, MD
Chief, Leukemia Service
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Weill Cornell Medical College
New York, New York
Martin S. Tallman, MD, serves as chief of the Leukemia Service in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and professor of medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College. He is a renowned expert in the management and development of new treatments for patients with both acute and chronic leukemia. He has been at the forefront of several key clinical trials that have led to new standards of care.
Dr. Tallman received his medical degree from the University of Chicago Medical School. After completing house staff training in internal medicine at Northwestern University, Dr. Tallman held a fellowship in hematology and medical oncology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington. Prior to his appointment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Dr. Tallman served as a tenured professor of medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and associate chief of the division of Hematology/Oncology at Northwestern University.
In addition to his significant contributions to clinical research, Dr. Tallman has held various leadership roles in the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group, where he chairs the Leukemia Committee; the National Comprehensive Cancer Network; the International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry; the National Bone Marrow Program; and the Leukemia Research Foundation. He also serves as an associate editor for the journal Blood.
Ayalew Tefferi, MD
Professor of Hematology and Internal Medicine
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minnesota
Ayalew Tefferi, MD, was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and migrated to the United States after completing his medical school education at the University of Athens in Greece. Dr. Tefferi received his hematology training at Mayo Clinic before joining the faculty at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, division of hematology, in the department of medicine. He is currently a full professor in hematology and internal medicine.
Dr. Tefferi is engaged primarily in direct patient care. His clinical and laboratory interests focus on myeloid disorders including polycythemia vera, essential thrombocythemia, myelofibrosis, chronic myeloid leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, acute leukemia, and the atypical myeloproliferative disorders including hypereosinophilic syndrome and systemic mastocytosis. His academic and research achievements have been copious and include more than 800 publications, books, book chapters, original articles, reviews, editorials, letters, and abstracts. He serves as an associate or section editor for the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Leukemia, American Journal of Hematology and European Journal of Hematology. He also participates in the editorial board of several journals including Blood, Cancer, Leukemia Research, Acta Haematologica, and Leukemia and Lymphoma. Dr. Tefferi has given more than 500 national and international invited lectureships and serves as faculty for the annual Hematology and Oncology Board review courses at George Washington University, Harvard and MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Steven Treon, MD
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Director, Bing Center for Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia, ; Adult Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, Mass.)
Dr. Steven Treon is the director of the Bing Center for Waldenström’s Research and an attending physician for medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass He is also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston and is the chair of the Waldenström’s Macroglobulinemia Clinical Trials Group.
After earning a doctorate in tumor immunology from Boston University, Dr. Treon completed a postgraduate fellowship in the Department of Microbiology at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Treon also received a medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine and completed an internship in medicine and a residency in internal medicine at BU Medical Center. Dr. Treon also served a clinical fellowship in hematology and oncology at Mass General Hospital and a research fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Treon’s main research interests focus on understanding the genetic basis and pathogenesis of Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia and the development of therapeutics for this malignancy. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Blood, Clinical Cancer Research and The Lancet.
Adrian Wiestner, MD, PhD
Laboratory of Lymphoid Malignancies
Adrian Wiestner graduated from the University of Basel with a M.D. in 1992 and a Ph.D. in 1997. He completed his residency in the Department of Internal Medicine at University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland from 1997 to 2000. He is certified by the Swiss Medical Board in Internal Medicine and by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates. He joined the NHLBI as a hematology fellow in 2000, became a clinical fellow at the National Cancer Institute in 2003, and joined the NHLBI as a tenure-track Investigator in 2004. He has been an attending physician in the NHLBI’s Hematology Branch since 2004. Dr. Wiestner has authored or coauthored more than 60 papers and is currently conducting multiple clinical research studies.
Combining medical training as a hematologist with a doctoral degree, Dr. Wiestner’s goal is to align his research in lymphoid malignancies as closely as possible with clinical translation. Using samples of blood, bone marrow, and lymph nodes collected from patients during clinical trials for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and the related mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), he aims to improve therapeutic strategies by identifying the critical molecular drivers of disease pathogenesis and understanding the impact of existing therapies on tumor cell stress responses and the development of drug resistance.
Using gene expression profiling of cells from MCL patients undergoing bortezomib treatment, Dr. Wiestner and his colleagues demonstrated that bortezomib, through inhibition of proteasome function, causes an abnormal accumulation of proteins. This results in two overlapping stress responses in these tumors; one due to the increased protein load in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and the other due to the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Patients who respond well to the drug show a very strong antioxidant response, suggesting that tumor cells are overwhelmed rather than incapable of fighting back. Resistant cells appear to have a higher basal level of antioxidant gene expression, suggesting that they are more competent in handling ROS stress. Complementary insights into bortezomib resistance came from the generation of MCL cell lines that are 50-100 times less sensitive to the drug. Dr. Wiestner and his colleagues have shown that the acquisition of bortezomib resistance, which is a slow and reversible process, correlates with an increase in the expression of genes that are typically expressed in plasma cells, including genes coding for protein chaperones and antioxidant functions. This “partial plasma cell program” endows cells with the capacity to handle high protein load and could be the key to MCL drug resistance. Clinically, a subset of bortezomib-resistant MCL indeed does show features of plasma cell differentiation, and is less sensitive to bortezomib.
For CLL, a number of studies using in vitro models have put forth candidate pathways that may be important for disease progression. Using gene expression profiling and analysis of signaling proteins, Dr. Wiestner and his colleagues demonstrated that CLL cells in the lymph node appear to be activated through a few distinct pathways, one of which operates through the B cell receptor. B cell receptor signaling inhibitors have been developed and have potent activity in certain lymphoid malignancies including CLL and MCL. Based on these observations, Dr. Wiestner’s team designed a clinical trial to study CLL cells isolated from the lymph node before and after treatment with B-cell receptor inhibitors. The goal is to study and contrast the impact of these inhibitors on the B-cell receptor pathway in patients that respond to therapy or develop resistance.
Dr. Wiestner’s group has also investigated the anti-tumor effects of lenalidomide in CLL and found that the drug induces a strikingly potent immune response that results in tumor shrinkage. Learning more about the biological action of single therapeutics allows for the design of rational combination therapies that have the potential to overcome the resistance that often develops with single agent therapies over time. The group has several ongoing clinical studies being conducted at the NIH clinical center (www.clinicalcenter.nih.gov) in Bethesda, MD that are open to patients from all over the United States. These clinical trials range in scope from observational studies for untreated CLL patients (NCT00923507) to treatment trials using novel and emerging drugs such as the BTK inhibitor ibrutinib (formerly PCI-32765; NCT01500733) or the fully humanized anti CD20 antibody ofatumumab (NCT01145209). For participant information please refer to www.clinicaltrials.gov, and enter the NCT identifier into the search field.
Linda Nielsen, NP
Linda Nielsen is an advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner with Hematology Oncology of Indiana. She has 35 years of clinical experience and is board certified in family practice. She has a post-masters in geriatrics and will complete her doctorate this spring at Purdue University. Her dissertation is on the implementation of a survivorship care plan in a community oncology clinic.
She received the outstanding professional award while attending Indiana Wesleyan University, elected by her peers; a distinguished service award from Marion-Adams School Corporation; and a letter of appreciation from the United States Marine Corps for volunteer activities. She currently holds the position of governance chair at Purdue University of Sigma Theta Tau National Honor Society of Nursing.
Past presentations by Nielsen include “How to practice evidence based medicine with a sample size of 2” on the frail elderly, “When everything goes south that you need to go north” on bedside assessment for the geriatric nurse, “Does an apple a day keep the cancer doctor away?” on cancer and nutrition, and several presentations on “Oral Chemotherapy” and “Survivorship”.