The ASBMT is proud to announce the names of the award recipients that will be honored at the 2018 BMT Tandem Meetings this February in Salt Lake City.
The 2018 ASBMT Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to A. John Barrett, MD, chief of the Bone Marrow Stem Cell Allotransplantation Section of the Hematology Branch, National Heart Lung Blood Institute (NHLBI). A past president of the ASBMT, Dr. Barrett is an outstanding senior investigator with numerous contributions to research in blood and marrow transplantation for more than 30 years. Co-chair of this year’s annual ASBMT-ISCT Cell Therapy Training Course, Dr. Barrett has been involved with the course since its inaugural session in 2015.
“It is important to note that his application of immune suppression to treat marrow failure disorders has been practice-changing,” said Catherine Bollard, M.D., FRACP, FRCPA, of the Children’s National Health System in Washington, DC. “Furthermore, both his laboratory and clinical work in transplantation immunology have significantly contributed to the stepwise improvements in outcome, and the broadening application of allogeneic stem cell transplantation that we have witnessed particularly in the last 20 years.”
Robert S. Negrin, MD, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Stanford Medicine was selected for the 2018 ASBMT E. Donnall Thomas Lecture. The lecture recognizes an eminent physician or scientist, either a clinician or investigator, who has contributed meritoriously to the advancement of knowledge in blood and marrow transplantation.
A past president of ASBMT, Dr. Negrin is being honored for his exceptional contributions to the field of hematopoietic transplantation, including his profound contribution to understanding of innate and adaptive immunity and its importance in determining outcomes of allogeneic hematopoietic transplantation. His efforts to develop novel model systems and technologies, from bioluminescent imaging to novel sequencing approaches, and to apply them to studies of effector and regulatory T cells, B cells, NK cells and other immune subsets have inspired a generation of scientists. More importantly, they are advancing the possibility that targeted therapies and adoptive immunotherapy will improve outcomes related to both relapse and GVHD. While his scientific contributions are the primary reason for this award, the ASBMT also recognizes his exceptional leadership, and his service as Associate Editor of Blood and as the founding Editor of Blood Advances. The title of his lecture is “The Ugly, The Bad and The Good of Allogeneic Transplantation.”
The 2018 ASBMT Public Service Awards will be presented to Jeffrey W. Chell, MD, & Michael Boo, JD.
Until his retirement in April of this year, Michael Boo. JD, served as chief strategy officer of the National Marrow Donor Program/Be The Match (NMDP), the national registry for the United States between 2001 and 2016. His contributions included the implementation of a new strategic planning process that helped guide substantial growth at NMDP, the development of the Center for Cord Blood in 2003, and increasing the NMDP’s share of the cord blood market in the United States from 15% to over 90%. Boo also identified and launched new products and services that had significant bottom-line revenue impact and developed new relationships within the extensive NMDP network of national and international partners, which improved access to cell sources and markets worldwide.
As NMDP chief executive officer and executive director of the CIBMTR, Dr. Chell 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.
“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.”
Read the entire September 2017 ASBMT eNews here.