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.

Prof Charles Craddock is professor of hemato-oncology at the University of Birmingham and academic director of the Centre for Clinical Haematology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. He trained in hematology at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford, and the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. As director of the BMT Unit at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, he drove the establishment and subsequent expansion of the £7 million Centre for Clinical Haematology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and as director of Birmingham Health Partners, he led the development of the £24 million Birmingham Institute of Translational Medicine, which opened in 2015.

Prof Craddock’s main research interests include the development of novel drug and transplant therapies in myeloid leukemias. He is chair of the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Acute Myeloid Leukaemia Working Group and leads the UK Haemato-oncology Trials Acceleration Programme. He pioneered the development of a UK stem cell transplant trials network, IMPACT, 1 of only 2 worldwide, which was launched in 2017.

Prof Craddock is chair of the UK Stem Cell Strategic Oversight Committee and was medical director of Anthony Nolan from 2010–2014. He was elected president of the British Society of Haematology in 2017. Prof Craddock was awarded the CBE for services to medicine and medical research in the 2016 New Year’s Honours list. He has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

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.

Dr Gökbuget is 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’s lymphoma. For more than 20 years, she has served as coordinator of the German Multicenter Study Group for ALL (GMALL) with more than 140 participating hospitals across Germany. She is the GMALL chair for adult ALL. She founded and established a national registry for ALL with an associated biobank, and 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 editor of the European ALL guidelines book.

Prof Josep-Maria Ribera is a practicing physician and researcher. He is the director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Unit at the Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol (HUGTP) and head of the Clinical Hematology Department for the Catalan Institute of Oncology also at HUGTP. He joined the Josep Carreras Institute at its creation and participated in the process of creation of the acute lymphoblastic leukemia research group.

Prof Ribera has been an associate professor of medicine at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) since 2003. He teaches post-graduate courses at UAB, University of Barcelona, the Universidad Internacional Menéndez y Pelayo, and the Escuela Nacional de Sanidad, as well as carrying out other varied teaching duties. 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’s work and publications have made him well known internationally and he is a member of the Steering Committee for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) of the European LeukemiaNet and the European Working Group for Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (EWALL). 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 HIV-related lymphomas. He has authored/co-authored more than 485 published clinical papers and 100 book chapters on hematology, oncology and internal medicine.