The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center–Jefferson Health (SKCC) has a new director of bone marrow transplant and cell-based therapy, Mount Sinai has a new head of clinical cancer research, and the National Hemophilia Foundation (NHF) has a new president and CEO.
Dr. Usama Gergis
Usama Gergis, MD, has joined SKCC in Philadelphia as director of the bone marrow transplant and immune cellular therapy program and as a professor in the department of medical oncology, division of hematological malignancies.
Dr. Gergis came to SKCC from Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, where he helped expand the use of umbilical cord blood transplant and established an immune cellular therapy program. He also established and led one of the largest oncology international medicine programs in the United States.
Dr. Gergis earned his medical degree from Cairo (Egypt) University. He completed an internal medicine residency and a hematology/oncology fellowship at the Brooklyn Hospital of Weill Cornell. He also completed a bone marrow transplant fellowship at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.
Karyn Aalami Goodman, MD, has been hired to lead clinical cancer research at Mount Sinai, New York. She is now the associate director for clinical research at the Tisch Cancer Institute and a professor and vice-chair for research and quality in the department of radiation oncology. In these roles, she will develop the infrastructure and resources to support clinical trials of cancer patients.
Dr. Goodman’s own research is focused on improving outcomes for patients with gastrointestinal malignancies. She has helped develop protocols combining radiation, chemotherapy, targeted agents, and immunotherapy.
Dr. Goodman earned her medical degree from Stanford (Calif.) University. She completed an internship in internal medicine at Stanford and residency training in radiation oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She was previously associate director of clinical research at the University of Colorado Cancer Center in Aurora.
Dr. Leonard A. Valentino
Leonard A. Valentino, MD, has assumed the role of president and CEO of the National Hemophilia Foundation in New York. In this role, Dr. Valentino will “work to advance the foundation’s mission of education, advocacy, and research,” according to the NHF.
Dr. Valentino previously held leadership roles at Spark Therapeutics, Shire, Baxalta, and Baxter Healthcare Corporation. Prior to that, he founded and led the Hemophilia and Thrombophilia Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Dr. Valentino earned his undergraduate and medical degrees from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. He completed his residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a fellowship in pediatric hematology-oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles .