Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center names director of bone marrow transplant, immune cellular therapy
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Usama Gergis, MD, MBA, has been named director of the bone marrow transplant and immune cellular therapy program at Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson.
Gergis also will serve as professor in the division of hematological malignancies within the department of medical oncology.
“I am very privileged to join the [Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center bone marrow transplant] team who pioneered a unique and innovative transplant approach, minimizing complications while retaining a powerful antitumor effect,” Gergis said in a press release. “Our published survival rates are ranked [among] the best in the nation. I hit the ground running, and I have been working diligently with my colleagues and the Jefferson leadership on a major redesign process that should reshape [bone marrow transplantation] and immune cellular therapy in Philadelphia.”
Gergis spent the past 12 years at Weill Cornell Medical College. During his time there, he helped to establish an immune cellular therapy program and to expand use of umbilical cord transplant.
His areas of expertise include graft-versus-host disease, high-risk myeloid malignancies, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for patients who lack matched donors.
“We are exceptionally pleased to have recruited Dr. Gergis to lead our bone marrow transplant and cell-based therapy program,” Karen E. Knudsen, MBA, PhD, executive vice president of oncology services at Jefferson Health and enterprise director of Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, said in the release. “This is the dawn of a new era of cancer therapy, with an increasingly accelerated pace of new cell-based interventions that provide superior outcomes. Dr. Gergis is a visionary leader who will bring new therapeutic options to [patients with cancer] in the Philadelphia region.”