Heslop Installed as President;
Barrett Elected Vice President

Helen Heslop, MD, has been installed as president of the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation.  She is professor of medicine and of pediatrics and director of Adult Stem Cell Transplantation at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine, The Methodist Hospital and Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston.

A. John Barrett, MD, section chief for Stem Cell Allotransplantation in the Hematology Branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Bethesda, is the newly elected and installed vice president, to become president in 2010.

Installed as secretary was Edward D. Ball, MD, professor of medicine and director and chief of the Blood and Marrow Transplantation Division and the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California San Diego, in LaJolla.

The installation of new officers and directors occurred at the society’s annual meeting, the BMT Tandem Meetings, on Feb. 14 in San Diego.  The election was by mail ballot among members of the society in December and January.

Newly elected and installed directors are:

·         Kenneth R. Cooke, MD, of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland

·         H. Joachim Deeg, MD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington in Seattle

·         Steven M. Devine, MD, of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center in Columbus

Claudio Anasetti, MD, was elevated to president-elect and will assume the presidency in 2009.  He is professor of oncology and medicine at the University of South Florida, and program leader of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at the Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa.

The new ASBMT president, Dr. Heslop, earned her medical degree with distinction at the University of Otago, completing training in medicine and hematology in New Zealand and the Royal Free Hospital in London.  She was on faculty at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital before moving to Baylor in 1997.

She has broad administrative, clinical and research expertise.  She is vice president of the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT) and a former member of the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. 

Dr. Heslop is an associate editor of Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, co-editor of Bone Marrow Transplantation and an editorial board member of Blood.  She was scientific program co-chair for the 2007 BMT Tandem Meetings in Keystone. 

Her research focuses on immunotherapy of hematologic malignancies and reconstituting anti-viral immunity post transplant.  She holds a Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award and is a member of the Association of American Physicians.