Faculty Biographies
Thursday, June 18, 2026
Elias Jabbour, MD
MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA
Dr Elias Jabbour is a professor of medicine in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) in Houston, where he also leads the acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) program. He graduated from the Saint Joseph University of Beirut Faculty of Medicine, Lebanon, 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 an assistant professor.
Dr Jabbour is actively involved in developmental therapeutics research in leukemia. Over the past 5 years, he has assisted in developing chemotherapeutic and biologic agents in leukemias and contributed to the development of others. These include Hyper-CVAD + ofatumumab in ALL, clofarabine in myeloid malignancies, hypomethylating agents in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndromes, tyrosine kinase therapy in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), and triplet therapy in AML. This research has also provided insight into the biology of leukemias, and Dr Jabbour has extensively addressed the question of resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors and analyzed the outcomes of these patients.
Dr Jabbour was actively associated with frontline studies of nilotinib and dasatinib, which resulted in US Food and Drug Administration approval of these agents for frontline CML therapy in 2010. He is leading efforts to test triplet therapy in AML (nucleoside analogs + anthracyclines + cytarabine). The interim results from this randomized trial show a significant improvement in outcome for patients who receive the nucleoside analog clofarabine and may change the standard of care for management of AML. Furthermore, he is currently investigating the benefit of adding humanized monoclonal antibody for the treatment of patients with ALL (ofatumumab and Hyper-CVAD) and collaborating in the development of monoclonal antibody studies in adult ALL. Finally, Dr Jabbour has authored or co-authored hundreds of peer-reviewed medical publications and has served on the editorials board of several scientific journals.
Roberta Demichelis, MD
Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, Mexico
Dr Roberta Demichelis is an assistant professor, head of the Department of Hematology and Oncology, and an attending physician at the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán (INCMNSZ) in Mexico City, Mexico. She graduated from the Universidad Anáhuac School of Medicine, then completed her residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in hematology at INCMNSZ.
Dr Demichelis is involved in clinical research with a focus on acute leukemia. She is a founding member of the Acute Leukemia Working Group of the Mexican Association for the Study of Hematology (Agrupación Mexicana para el Estudio de la Hematología). The group conducts prospective multicentric studies focused on characterizing Mexican patients with acute leukemia and improving outcomes in the region. She actively participates in American Society of Hematology (ASH) initiatives, serves as a member of the ASH Clinical Research Training Institute (CRTI) subcommittee, and is co-director of the CRTI for Latin America.
