Faculty Biographies

Dr Elias Jabbour is professor of medicine, Department of Leukemia, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC), Houston, Texas. He graduated from the Saint Joseph University School of Medicine, Beirut, and joined the Hotel Dieu de France University Hospital as a resident. He pursued a fellowship in hematology-oncology at the Gustave Roussy Institute, France. In 2003, he joined MDACC as a fellow in the Department of Hematology/Leukemia and Stem Cell Transplantation. He later joined the faculty in the Leukemia Department as assistant professor.

Dr Jabbour is actively involved in research in both acute and chronic forms of leukemia. He was involved in clinical trials that led to the approval of several drugs in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). He actively assisted in developing chemotherapeutic and biologic agents in leukemias and contributed to the development of others. Dr Jabbour has designed more than a dozen clinical trials assessing new combinations for the management of de novo ALL, elderly ALL, and relapsed/refractory disease. Of note, he developed a protocol that has shown significant improvements in survival rates for patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive ALL. In addition, he developed another innovative treatment approach for these patients by combining blinatumomab, a bispecific monoclonal antibody, with ponatinib, offering a chemotherapy-free regimen that it is hoped will further increase cure rates. Another area on which he focused his research is elderly patients with ALL. The aggressive biology of the disease and elderly patients’ poor tolerance of intensive chemotherapy leads to low survival rates for this patient population.

Dr Jabbour is currently investigating an innovative strategy combining new monoclonal antibodies such as inotuzumab ozogamicin, a conjugated anti-CD22 antibody, and blinatumomab with minimal chemotherapy. If successful, such strategies will likely increase the cure rates of adult patients with ALL to the high level achieved in pediatric patients.

Dr Jabbour has taken an active role in the medical community, participating in numerous scientific meetings. He has authored or co-authored numerous publications (>550 peer-reviewed publications) and abstracts, and serves as a reviewer for many scientific journals. He has received several prestigious awards, among them merit awards from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2005, 2006, 2007) and the American Society of Hematology (2005, 2006, 2007). He also received several other honors, including the Kimberly Patterson and Shannon Timmons fellowships and the highly coveted Celgene Future Leader in Hematology (2007) and Young Investigator in Hematology (2016) awards.

Dr Nicola Gökbuget has worked at the University Hospital Frankfurt, Germany, for more than 25 years, and as senior physician she heads the study center of the Department of Medicine II. She is task force director for clinical trials of the University Cancer Center and principal investigator of the Frankfurt Cancer Institute. She serves as managing director of central clinical trial coordination for Goethe University and University Hospital.

Dr Gökbuget is a coordinating or principal investigator of numerous academic or industry-sponsored trials in adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and related diseases such as lymphoblastic lymphoma or Burkitt lymphoma. For more than 20 years, she has served as chair of the German Multicenter Study Group for ALL (GMALL), with more than 140 participating hospitals across Germany. She founded and established a national registry for ALL with an associated biobank, and she has chaired the European Hematology Association Scientific Working Group for ALL for the past 3 years. Dr Gökbuget is a founding member and board member of the German Network for Acute and Chronic Leukemias and the European Leukemia Network (ELN). She is also a founding member of the ELN Working Group for Adult ALL and is corresponding author of the ELN guidelines for adult ALL.

Dr Nicolas Boissel is head of the adolescent and young adults unit, Department of Hematology, Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, France, and professor of medicine at Université de Paris. After beginning his career as a research fellow at the Pasteur Institute and as an intern at Paris Municipal Hospitals, he completed a PhD at the Department of Immunology at Saint-Louis Hospital in 2002 while completing his MD at the Université de Paris. In 2005, he went on to become assistant professor at Hôpital Saint-Louis in the acute leukemia unit, before taking up his current position in 2010.

Dr Boissel is engaged in therapeutics for patients with bone marrow disorders, including acute leukemia, lymphoma, and aplastic anemia, with a specific focus on adolescent and young adult comprehensive care. His clinical research interests include the role of new oncogenic events and minimal residual disease to stratify therapeutic approaches in acute, as well as the development of immunotherapy in the field. He is involved in many trials designed to improve the outcome of acute leukemia patients. He is chairman of the Group for Research on Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and of the French Onco-hematology Group for Adolescents and Young Adults (GO-AJA).

Prof Josep-Maria Ribera is a practicing physician and researcher. He is a senior consultant of the Clinical Hematology Department for the Catalan Institute of Oncology and the Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol in Badalona, Spain. He joined the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute at its creation and leads the acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) research group. After gaining his medical degree, he specialized in hematology at the Hospital Clínic Barcelona before completing his PhD in the Clinical Hematology Department.

Prof Ribera has been a full professor of medicine at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) since 2003. He teaches postgraduate courses at UAB, the University of Barcelona, the Universidad Internacional Menéndez y Pelayo, and the Escuela Nacional de Sanidad, and he carries out other varied teaching duties.

Prof Ribera’s work and publications have made him well-known internationally. He is a member of the Steering Committee for ALL of the European LeukemiaNet and the European Working Group for Adult ALL. His research focuses on the study of new treatment approaches and prognostic factors in adult ALL, and he collaborates closely with the Lymphoma Research Group in the study of therapy and prognosis in human immunodeficiency virus-related lymphomas. He has authored or co-authored more than 485 published clinical papers and 100 book chapters on hematology, oncology, and internal medicine.