Dr. William Osler famously said, “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” I am a strong believer in individualizing treatment plans unique to each patient based on understanding the patient as a whole and the specifics of their disease. I am committed to each patient’s care and work hard to ensure that every single patient has the most positive clinical outcome.
I primarily treat people with hematologic malignancies such as Lymphoma, Multiple Myeloma, Leukemia and Bone Marrow diseases. I have a special interest in Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell Therapy (CAR T-cell), stem cell transplantation and the use of antibodies to fight cancer. My research focus is in developing novel cellular immunotherapies to target cancer cell antigens. I work with colleagues in our basic science laboratories to discover innovative ways to stimulate an individual patient’s immune system to fight cancer and research how to enhance their tumor’s immune microenvironment to make their cancer cells more susceptible to immunotherapy. I also have an interest in chemotherapeutic pharmacology and understanding how to precisely target each patient’s tumor. Every patient’s regimen is tailored by identifying and targeting the tumor’s mutation and delivering a therapy based on a precision medicine approach.
I am passionate about giving every patient access to world-class heme malignancies care. The challenge is that some of our best therapies are only available at tertiary level cancer centers like Montefiore which is a long-distance travel for many patients. At the same time, patients benefit from getting their cancer care close to home, in their own community. As director of the Montefiore Hematologic-Malignancy Network, I have worked with our heme malignancy team to develop a Co—Management Model, where we collaborate with community medical oncologists to enable patients who live far from the Bronx access to novel therapies only available at an NCI designated Cancer Center.