Speakers who participated in the 2019 GvHD Symposium

Sep 18, 2018General News

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Joseph H. Antin, MD

GvHD Symposium Speakers 2019 Joseph H. Antin, M.D. Stem Cell Transplantation Physician. keynote speaker

Joseph H. Antin, M.D. Stem Cell Transplantation Physician.

Dana Farber Cancer Insitute
Dr. Antin received his MD from Cornell University in 1978, and postgraduate training in hematology and medical oncology at DFCI and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He subsequently served as director of the Bone Marrow Transplantation Service at BWH from 1987 to 1997. He now heads the Stem Cell Transplant Program of the Department of Medical Oncology at DFCI and BWH. He is a founding member and past president of the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation and a past Chairman of the Steering Committee of the BMT Clinical Trial Network.

Oluwatosin (Tosin) Goje, MD
Cleveland Clinic
Oluwatosin Goje (Jaiyeoba), who leads the Reproductive Infectious Diseases Program at Cleveland Clinic, is an Obstetrician Gynecologist fellowship-trained in Infectious Diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, one of four academic centers that offer this specialty training in North America.

Colleen Lance, MD
Cleveland Clinic
Colleen G. Lance, MD is a staff physician in the Sleep Disorders Center in the Neurological Institute, Cleveland Clinic. She serves as Medical Director for the Cleveland Clinic-Hillcrest Hospital sleep laboratory.
Dr. Lance earned her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She completed Internal Medicine residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, including a year as Chief Medical Resident. After practicing internal medicine in private practice and as a hospitalist, she returned for fellowship in Sleep Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center. During her fellowship, she received the Founder’s Award from the Southern Sleep Society for her research in sleep disordered breathing in bariatric patients. She is board certified in Sleep Medicine through the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Sleep Medicine.
Dr. Lance has practiced sleep medicine since 2001, including experience at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the Memorial Hermann Hospital System in Houston, Texas. She has been an active member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and is currently serving on the Payor Policy and Review Committee. Also, she served as the President of the Texas Society of Sleep Professionals for 2 years. Her passions include the treatment of complex sleep disordered breathing, particularly with non-invasive ventilation for which she has lectured both regionally and nationally. She is currently working on research projects in sleep apnea in relation to male fertility, and the use of commercial sleep monitoring devices in the oncology patient population.

Navneet Majhail, MD
Cleveland Clinic
Dr Navneet Majhail is the Director of the Blood & Marrow Transplant Program at the Taussig Cancer Institute, Cleveland Clinic and Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio. He is also the president-elect of the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation. He specializes in the care of adult patients receiving blood and marrow transplantation. His research focuses on transplant outcomes, health services and health policy issues in blood and marrow transplantation and quality of life and late effects in transplant survivors.

Areej R. El-Jawahri, MD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. El-Jawahri is an oncologist specializing in the care of patients with hematologic malignancies and those undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Clinically, she takes care of patients with acute leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, chronic leukemias, lymphomas, and myelomas. Her research interests include investigating patient-reported outcomes, enhancing patient-centered decision-making interventions, and designing supportive care interventions to improve the care of patients with hematologic malignancies with a special emphasis on patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Her research also explores models of health care delivery to improve patients’ quality of life and clinical outcomes. She is an active member of the MGH Cancer Outcomes Research Program (CORE). She will also leading efforts in building and developing the MGH Bone Marrow Transplantation Survivorship Program. She has led and conducted multiple clinical trials focusing on enhancing the experience and clinical outcomes of patients with hematologic malignancies.

Amanda Budai, MSW, LCSW
UPMC
Mangaer of Social Work
Amanda Budai, MSW, LCSW, earned her Bachelor’s degree in social work from Edinboro University and her Master’s degree in social work from University of Pittsburgh. She has been a clinical social worker at UPMC Cancer Center for 10 years working with patients and families with hematology malignancies, stem cell transplant, and most recently, CAR T therapy. In 2018, she was named Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Hematology-Oncology Social Worker of the Year by the Association of Oncology Social Work. In addition, she serves as a Social Work Board Member for Bone Marrow Foundation, and as a Social Work Continuing Education Committee Member for the National Marrow Donor Program.

John F DiPersio, MD, PhD
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
My research focuses on fundamental and translational aspects of leukemia and stem cell biology. These studies include identification of genetic abnormalities in human leukemias, understanding processes involving stem cell and leukemia cell trafficking and clinical and translational programs in both leukemia/MDS and stem cell transplantation. My laboratory also utilizes unique mouse models of allogeneic stem cell transplantation to explore novel genetic and epigenetic interventions aimed at mitigating graft vs. host disease (GvHD) while maintaining graft vs. leukemia (GvL). I am also a PI of multiple clinical trials focused on the diagnosis and treatment of patients with hematologic malignancies or those undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation. As Deputy Director of the Siteman Cancer Center I oversee all clinical and basic science research in the cancer center and I am active as a mentor of trainees and junior faculty and oversee faculty recruitment and retention in the Division. My personal research has focused on the role of stem cell transplantation and novel targeted interventions to alter the natural history of AML and other hematological malignancies. These studies have utilized bench-to-bedside mechanistic and preclinical modeling studies followed by early phase clinical trials. They have focused on targeting key elements of the hematopoietic niche for optimal stem cell mobilization and chemosensitization, mitigating GvHD in T replete transplants, understanding the genomic alterations in de novo and relapsed AML and developing and testing in the clinic novel therapeutics and immunotherapeutics for the treatment of AML before and after stem cell transplantation.

Steven Z. Pavletic, MD, MS
National Cancer Institute / NIH
Dr. Pavletic received his M.D. from the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in Croatia in 1979. In 1992, he completed a clinical fellowship in bone marrow transplantation at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington Medical School in Seattle, WA. In 1995, he completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha, NE, and completed his hematology and oncology fellowship in June 1997. Until October 2002, Dr. Pavletic served as the director of the Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation Program at UNMC. In 2002, Dr. Pavletic received an appointment at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and an adjunct appointment at the National Institute for Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases at NIH. Currently, he is the head of the Graft-versus-Host and Autoimmunity Unit in the Experimental Transplantation and Immunology Branch. In October 2006, Dr. Pavletic received the NCI Director’s award for his achievements in developing national and international consensus guidelines for clinical trials in chronic GVHD.

Madan Jagasia, MD
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Associate Professor of Medicine
Chief, Section of Hematology-Stem Cell Transplant
Director, Outpatient Transplant Program

Dr. Jagasia is an integral part of the long-term transplant clinic with a singular focus on delivering efficient and effective care to the transplant patient. His primary research interest is graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), an immune complication of allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

As a clinical investigator, he is actively trying to identify non-HLA genetic factors that predict development of both acute and chronic GVHD. The development of biomarkers that predict for type of organs affected with GVHD along with response to therapy is an important aspect of his research. He is actively involved in clinical trials targeting various manifestations of chronic GVHD, and is the site principal investigator for the national chronic GVHD consortium.

Dr. Jagasia received his MBBS from King Edward Memorial College in Mumbai, India. He received his fellowship training at Vanderbilt University in hematology-oncology. He pursued his Masters of Science in Clinical Investigation at Vanderbilt from 2004-2006.

Dr. Jagasia has authored and co-authored more than 80 research articles in peer reviewed-journals such as Blood, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bone Marrow Transplantation and Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. He has served as a reviewer for many of these journals. He is a member of the GVHD and Leukemia working committees for the of International Blood and Marrow Transplant Center.

Michael Pulsipher, MD
Children Hospital Los Angeles
Dr. Pulsipher joined the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases as the Head of the Section of Blood and Marrow Transplantation (BMT) and as BMT Clinical Research Chair in 2015. He is currently group chair of the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium – an 80-member international clinical trials group—and is recognized as a leading influence in the field of pediatric BMT. He is currently principal or co-principal investigator on six national, multi-center studies and a co-investigator on multiple additional clinical trials. Dr. Pulsipher has authored more than 180 articles in peer-reviewed journals including New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Blood, and Nature Genetics. He has also written twelve book chapters and presented widely at national and international conferences.
Clinical Interests
Dr. Pulsipher performs allogeneic and autologous transplantation for a wide variety of cancers, bone marrow disorders, and genetic diseases. He has significant expertise in allogeneic transplantation for acute leukemias, especially ALL, where he has run national research trials and published extensively. Another area Dr. Pulsipher is interested in is reducing toxicity approaches to transplantation of non-malignant disorders, and he is running national research protocols for patients with immunodeficiencies, HLH, and bone marrow failure disorders, specifically severe aplastic anemia. Finally, Dr. Pulsipher has become a national leader in cell therapy research and has organized or chaired national trials testing CAR T-cells and Viral Specific T-cells.

Jennifer Holter-Chakrabarty, MD
Stephenson Cancer Center
Jennifer Holter-Chakrabarty, MD is an associate professor of medicine in the section of hematology/oncology. She is also an adjunct associate professor of radiation oncology and holds the Inasmuch Foundation Chair in Cancer Screening, Education, and Outreach.
A lifelong Sooner, Jennifer received her Bachelor of Zoology with distinction from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Holter attended medical school, residency, and fellowship at the University of Oklahoma. She is one of several active bone marrow transplant physicians at the Stephenson Cancer Center.
In education, she is a member of the Admission Board Committee, and will serve as chair for a three-year term starting in July 2014.
Her research interests include leukemia, transplantation, and imaging of marrow failure syndromes. In these endeavors, she has been funded locally and has collaborated with the National Cancer Institute to move her bench work to the bedside. She is currently the lead investigator at the Stephenson Cancer Center for a “Multi-Institutional Prospective Pilot Study of Lupron to Enhance Lymphocyte Immune Reconstitution following Allogeneic Transplantation in Post-pubertal Children and Adults with Molecular Imaging Evaluation.”
Dr. Holter strongly believes in training the next generation of medical and research professionals, guaranteeing excellence in oncology care for Oklahoma in the future.

Marcel R. M. van den Brink, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Physician-scientist Marcel R. M. van den Brink studies the immunology of bone marrow transplantation. His expertise is in allogeneic (donor-provided) blood stem cell transplantation for adult cancer patients. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a therapy for a variety of malignancies, including leukemias, lymphomas and myeloma. Several complications limit its use including relapse of malignancy, graft versus host disease, and prolonged immune depletion caused by the conditioning required for successful transplantation – all of which can lead to increased morbidity and mortality after allo-HSCT. His laboratory uses murine HSCT models to study clinically important problems in HSCT and to test novel therapeutic strategies which can be translated into clinical practice. Van den Brink’s major projects include strategies to enhance post-transplant immune reconstitution, the role of T cells in graft-versus-host-disease and graft-versus-tumor activity.

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