ASH Presents Inaugural ASH™-AMFDP Award

Dr. Christopher Flowers, the winner of this year’s ASH-AMFDP award, is one busy hematologist. The doctor, a Seattle native and graduate of Stanford, currently serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and an Assistant Professor of Hematology and Oncology at Winship Cancer Institute at the Emory University School of Medicine, where he’s currently teaching a course on health outcomes research. He also works as Clinical Director for the Oncology Informatics Program, and as a member of the Emory Stem Cell and Bone Marrow Transplant team. He finds time to co-direct the Lymphoma Clinic at Emory, where he provides specialized care for patients with lymphoid malignancies involving multi-specialty input from hematopathologists, immunologists, surgeons, radiation oncologists, and specialists in nuclear medicine and bone marrow transplantation.

Somewhere, amidst his myriad colliding careers of conducting research, inspiring students, and saving lives, he found time to apply for the ASH-AMFDP Award. It is fortunate that he did, because now Dr. Christopher Flowers can add another title to his list: the first ASH-AMFDP Scholar.

The ASH-AMFDP program, launched in 2005, was created through a partnership between the American Society of Hematology and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program. The goal of the program is to increase the number of under-represented minority scholars from the field of hematology with academic and research appointments. Along with the Minority Medical Student Award Program, the ASH-AMFDP represents ASH’s ongoing Minority Recruitment Initiative.

In order to qualify for the award, applicants must come from historically disadvantaged backgrounds and be completing or have completed their formal clinical training. Additionally, applicants must have excelled in their education, be prepared to devote four consecutive years to research, and be absolutely committed to pursuing academic careers, improving the status of the underserved, and decreasing health disparities. The reward for such a candidate is substantial, and includes a four-year complimentary ASH membership, including a subscription to Blood and four years of all-expenses paid annual meeting attendance. Additionally, the winner will receive an annual stipend of $75,000 and an annual grant of $29,139 in support of research activities.

For Dr. Flowers, that extra money will mean extra support for his robust research interests, including oncology informatics, clinical and translational research, and cancer outcomes research. His current research projects span three areas: translational research clinical trials in non-Hodgkin lymphoma; oncology informatics projects developing an information infrastructure to support pharmacogenomics and outcomes research; and medical decision analyses and cost-effectiveness analyses aimed at developing strategies to individualize care for cancer patients. He currently serves as the Principal Investigator (PI) for two phase II WCI ELITE trials, “A Study of Fludarabine and Mitoxantrone, Followed by GM-CSF and Rituximab® in Patients with Low-Grade NHL” and “Mini- Transplant and Early Adoptive Immunotherapy for Low Grade Hematolgic Malignancies” that currently are accruing patients. He is the national PI for a protocol investigating the use of fl udarabine and alemtuzumab for patients with relapsed CLL, and a collaborating PI on five other clinical trials for patients with hematological malignancies. Meanwhile, with his Oncology Informatics group, his current projects include description of data structures of the legacy databases and the integrated database, and the data integration tools, as well as development of advanced structured query algorithm for identifying cancer diagnoses, treatment regimens, and treatment outcomes from linked data sources.

Dr. Flowers stands out as an exceptional scholar. The ASH-AMFDP award aims to ensure that many more talented minority scholars like Dr. Flowers will pursue exciting new research in hematology.

This article originally ran in the December 10, 2006, issue of ASH News Daily.