Myelodysplastic syndromes: from conductiong clinical trials of novel therapies to evaluating real-life effectiveness of exisiting therapies

摘要

Could you briefly summarize your career path, & how you came to specialize in hematologic oncology? I have always wanted to be a physician since I was a child. I was lucky enough to get accepted in one of the two medical schools in Jordan at the time; University of Jordan. In the fourth year of studying medicine, I decided to become a blood cancer doctor and researcher. That decision was largely related to a young child with an advanced cancer whom I cared for during my first clinical rotation and which turned out to be a life-changing experience. I did not want to just give chemotherapy and see patients, I wanted to be able to investigate novel drugs and offer new hope for the patients. I knew at the same time I wanted to complete my advanced training in the USA as it had all the resources I needed to become a successful translational/clinical researcher. After completing medical school and while completing the necessary exams to move to the USA, I trained in the King Hussein Cancer Center in Jordan for a year further solidifying my career decision. Thereafter I joined Rochester General Hospital Internal Medicine program and took my first steps in learning how to conduct clinical research and critically appraise the medical literature. The next step in my training was joining the hematology/oncology fellowship program at Johns Hopkins University, which also included significant research time followed by a dedicated year researching myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). During that year I also completed a Master of Science program in Clinical Investigation at Bloomberg School of Public Health in Johns Hopkins University. Last year, I joined the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale University as an Assistant Professor in Medicine in the section of hematology.