Congratulations to ASH's Three New Executive Committee Members
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) has announced the election of three new members to its Executive Committee for terms beginning after the 2019 ASH Annual Meeting in December. Jane N. Winter, MD, will serve a one-year term as vice president, followed by successive terms as president-elect and president. Alison Loren, MD, and Bob Löwenberg, MD, PhD, will serve four-year terms as councillors.
Dr. Winter is professor of medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. She has been a member of ASH since 1983 and has served in various leadership roles representing the Society, most recently as an ASH councillor. She is completing a two-year term as a member of the Sickle Cell Disease Clinical Trials Network Oversight Committee.
"Never before have there been so many promising scientific advances and new effective therapies in the field of hematology. Yet we struggle with their implementation because of a shrinking workforce," Dr. Winter said in a statement. "As hematologists, we must embrace new constituencies, such as those who work in immunotherapy or vascular biology with whom we share our basic mission, learn from others, and always be willing to adapt."
She added, "I'm known to be critical and outspoken, with a strong commitment to diversity and fairness, and will bring these qualities to the Executive Committee."
Dr. Loren is the director of blood and marrow transplantation and vice chair of faculty development, as well as associate professor of medicine, in the Department of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She has been a member of ASH since 2001 and chaired the Committee on Training from 2015 to 2018. Currently, Dr. Loren is cochair of the ASH Editor Search Committee.
Dr. Löwenberg is professor of hematology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He has been a member of ASH since 1998 and is currently finishing his term as editor-in-chief of Blood, the Society's flagship journal. Previously, he was chair of ASH's International Members Committee and of the Scientific Committee on Transplantation Biology.
ASH is delighted to welcome these members to its Executive Committee!
Calling All Parents!
ASH is pleased to announce free childcare – and ‘Future Hematologist' T-shirts – on site at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida for parents attending this year's ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition, December 7-10!
Visit hematology.org/annualmeeting to register.
ASH's ClinGen Partnership Bears First Fruit
A new study in Blood Advances, ASH's online peer-reviewed journal, represents the first data to be published from the Society's partnership with researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) grantee, to foster genomic research.
The study, "ClinGen Myeloid Malignancy Variant Curation Expert Panel recommendations for germline RUNX1 Variants" by Xi Luo, PhD, Simone Feurstein, MD, PhD, and Shruthi Mohan, PhD, et al., published in Blood Advances on October 16. It is a product of the ASH-supported ClinGen Working Group that is analyzing the clinical significance of variants and mutations associated with myeloid malignancies.
ASH was the first professional society or foundation to sponsor ClinGen Working Groups and is supporting a second expert review panel that will analyze the clinical significance of variants and mutations associated with platelet disorders to aid in the interpretation of diagnostic genetic tests. The results of this effort will be shared with the scientific community through ClinVar, a publicly available NIH database that houses data on genetic mutations submitted by laboratories nationwide.
ASH's participation in the effort is part of a larger Precision Medicine Initiative that the Society undertook to improve genomic profiling of hematologic diseases and identify strategies to improve the use of molecular data in clinical care, research, and education.
Find the study at ashpublications.org/bloodadvances.