Leukemia Experts Discuss Early Career Growth, Mentorship, and Gender Bias in Academia

Welcome to OncLive On Air^®! I’m your host today, Caroline Seymour.

OncLive On Air^® is a podcast from OncLive^®, which provides oncology professionals with the resources and information they need to provide the best patient care. In both digital and print formats, OncLive^® covers every angle of oncology practice, from new technology to treatment advances to important regulatory decisions.

In today’s episode, we passed the mic to Catherine E. Lai, MD, MPH, an associate professor and physician leader of the Leukemia Clinical Research Unit at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who moderated a discussion for OncLive’s Women in Oncology series.

Dr Lai was joined by Courtney DiNardo, MD, MSCE; Eunice Wang, MD; and Jessica Altman, MD.

DiNardo is an associate professor in the Department of Leukemia and Division of Cancer Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Wang is chief of the Leukemia Service, medical director of Infusion Services, professor of oncology, and an assistant member of the Tumor Immunology Program in the Department of Immunology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York. Altman is a professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

In this exclusive conversation, Drs DiNardo, Wang, and Altman discussed the challenges they faced in their early careers, including characterizing acute myeloid leukemia prior to the development of prognostic scoring systems, the rollout of molecular profiling and targeted therapy in the early 2000s, and their growth from protégés to mentors.

They also spoke about the overlap between mentorship and friendship, how their work in the laboratory lent itself toward knowing which questions are worth being answered and asked, the importance of an open mind, and the increasing awareness of gender bias in academic medicine.

That’s all we have for today! Thank you for listening to this episode of OncLive On Air^®. Check back on Mondays and Thursdays for exclusive interviews with leading experts in the oncology field.

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