I have over 30 years of experience treating hematologic malignancy and TCT patients and designing and implementing clinical and translational research studies.
I have chaired or co-chaired multiple clinical trials, including CALGB 100104 that evaluated lenalidomide maintenance after autologous hematopoietic cell transplant (auto-HCT) for multiple myeloma (MM) patients. These studies highlight my interest in developing novel strategies for understanding, controlling and eradicating disease after cellular therapy and minimizing treatment related morbidity and mortality. Controlling Graft-versus-Host Disease (GvHD) the major toxicity of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) without compromising the Graft-versus-Tumor (GvT) effect is critical for widespread application of this form of cellular therapy.
We focus on understanding the biology of cellular therapies and predicting and minimizing treatment-related morbidity and mortality. He is defining the role of Galectin-3 (Gal-3) in preclinical allo-HCT and we have been conducting an analysis of Gal-3 as a plasma biomarker for predicting the onset of clinical acute GvHD and predicting mortality after all-HCT. This may allow investigators to develop strategies to intervene early before the develop of severe GvHD.