Jeffrey W. Chell, M.D, Chief Executive Officer of the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) since 2000, announced last year that he would be retiring in November of 2017.
On May 2, the NMDP announced that C. Randal “Randy” Mills, Ph.D. will join NMDP/Be The Match as CEO on June 30 and Dr. Chell will become CEO emeritus.
Dr. Chell has led the NMDP through a period of dramatic clinical and academic growth. Under his leadership, the Be The Match Registry® has dramatically expanded, increasing the access of ASBMT and NMDP centers to unrelated donor products, including cord blood units, from around the world. In addition, Dr. Chell was a co-founder and served as Executive Director of the Center for International Blood & Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR), a key ASBMT partner and the co-sponsor of our annual BMT Tandem Meetings. Established in 2004, CIBMTR is a joint effort between the NMDP and the Medical College of Wisconsin.
“Dr. Chell has had transformative impact in the fields of blood and marrow transplantation and cellular immunotherapy,” noted ASBMT President Krishna Komanduri, MD. “Through efforts including his leadership of the NMDP’s System Capacity Initiative, which brought together diverse stakeholders to discuss how the academic framework could support the sustainable growth of transplant centers, he helped foster the growth of academic transplant programs while always maintaining a patient-centered focus. While Jeff’s partnership will be missed, we are pleased that he has left NMDP/Be the Match in a strong position to continue his legacy.”
Komanduri also extended his welcome, on behalf of the ASBMT, to Dr. Chell’s successor, Dr. Mills.
“Dr. Mills brings to the NMDP a wealth of experience from the public and private sectors in diverse fields of cellular therapies, including experience with trials of cellular therapies for graft-versus-host disease and, most recently, in basic and translational research in regenerative medicine as President and CEO of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM),” said Komanduri. “The ASBMT extends our congratulations to Dr. Mills as he assumes the leadership of the NMDP. We look forward to working with him and to continuing our shared efforts with Be the Match in advancing therapies for the blood and marrow transplant patients we jointly serve.”
Read the entire June 2017 ASBMT eNews here.