Virtual Study Groups: Optimizing Management of Patients with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia

Dr. Jerald Radich is a Member of the Clinical Research Division and Director of the Molecular Oncology Lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, WA. He is Chair of the Leukemia Translational Medicine Committee of the Southwest Oncology Group, co-chair of the NCI/NIH Leukemia Steering Committee, and is on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the NIH Genome Research Institute. He belongs to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and the EuroLeukemiaNet (ELN) CML committees, and is on the Scientific Board of the International CML Foundation. Dr. Radich's laboratory work centers on the molecular biology of response, resistance, and progression in adult and chronic leukemia.

Dr. Michael Deininger is Professor and Chief of Hematology and Hematologic Malignancies for the Department of Internal Medicine and for the Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah. He is an HCI investigator and member of the Experimental Therapeutics program. He has extensive experience treating patients with blood cancers, including chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and myeloproliferative neoplasms, a group of blood cancers related to leukemia. Dr. Deininger received his medical degree from the University of Würzburg Medical School in Germany in 1990. In 1995, he obtained a grant to enroll in the PhD program at Imperial College, London. In August 2010, Dr. Deininger became the M.M. Wintrobe Professor of Medicine at the University of Utah and was appointed Chief of the Division of Hematology and Hematologic Malignancies.
 
Dr. Deininger’s scientific focus is leukemia, specifically myeloproliferative neoplasms including CML. As a clinician-scientist with a translational research focus, Dr. Deininger is heading an extramurally funded research laboratory that is dedicated to the study of signaling pathways, drug resistance and new molecular therapies in leukemia. Dr. Deininger’s work describing the selective effects of imatinib on CML cells provided the rationale for clinical trials that led to the approval of the drug as the first molecularly-based therapy for leukemia. Current work in his lab is focused on understanding the role of the bone marrow microenvironment in leukemia drug resistance, discovering novel therapeutic targets and developing more specific signal transduction inhibitors. Dr. Deininger’s work encompasses more than 170 articles in the peer-reviewed literature, including journals like Blood, Journal of Clinical Investigation and the New England Journal of Medicine. He has co-authored more than 10 book chapters, with contributions in leading textbooks such as DeVita’s Principles of Oncology. He is a regular speaker at major international scientific meetings, such as the American Society of Hematology and the European Hematology Association and a peer-reviewer for journals like Nature Genetics and Cancer Cell. His honors include the Alexandra Kefalides Prize for Leukemia Research and membership on the editorial board of Blood, the leading journal in hematology.

Amit K. Verma, MD, is Associate Professor of Oncology and of Developmental and Molecular Biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York. He is a recipient of a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology; an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award; and a Leukemia and Lymphoma Scholar in Clinical Research Award. Dr. Verma trained at the University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois, and previously was a member of the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Houston, Texas.