Neal Flomenberg, M.D., to be Honored at Philadelphia Gala March 11

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Professionally speaking, Neal Flomenberg, M.D., is most proud that the bone marrow transplant program he helped to build at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia rarely turns away high-risk patients. In fact, Jefferson has become the go-to program to which many physicians send their patients when they don’t have another option to offer.

An internationally renowned bone marrow transplant specialist, Dr. Flomenberg will receive the prestigious Service to Mankind Award from the regional Leukemia & Lymphoma Society at its annual gala at the Hyatt Regency Philadelphia at Penn’s Landing on Saturday, March 11, 2006.

Dr. Flomenberg is director of the Division of Medical Oncology in the Department of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson. He has been director of the division’s Hematologic Malignancies and Blood and Marrow Transplant Program since coming to Jefferson in 1994. Under his leadership, the program has performed more than 450 autologous or allogeneic transplants since that time.

According to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, “Dr. Flomenberg will be recognized for his contributions to the care of patients with hematologic malignancies and those undergoing marrow or stem cell transplant.” Dr. Flomenberg, who is also professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College, has been involved in more than 1,500 transplants in adults and children in his career. In 2003, h e was named the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Man of the Year for Eastern Pennsylvania.

“Dr. Flomenberg has been a great asset to both the Philadelphia community and to our patients here at Jefferson,” says Arthur Feldman, M.D., Ph.D., Magee Professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College. “He is a caring, concerned and innovative clinician who has pushed forward the field of bone marrow transplantation.”

“The Kimmel Cancer Center and Jefferson are proud of Dr. Neal Flomenberg and the compassionate care he has provided day and night for his patients at Jefferson for so many years,” says Richard G. Pestell, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Kimmel Cancer Center and professor and chair of cancer biology at Jefferson Medical College.

“The program’s philosophy is that we should continue to improve and try to be innovative,” says Dr. Flomenberg. “We’re not simply here to practice state-of-the-art medicine, but here to help define the state-of-the-art in our field.”

Bone marrow transplantation has changed dramatically in the past decade, with the use of peripheral blood stem cells instead of bone marrow. That development is perhaps the most remarkable change since Dr. Flomenberg came to Jefferson and first established the program 12 years ago. When he left his position as director of the Medical College of Wisconsin’s bone marrow transplant program to come here, it was a homecoming of sorts: Dr. Flomenberg is a graduate of Jefferson Medical College.

Before his time at Wisconsin, he had spent 12 years at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York as a fellow and faculty member.

According to Dr. Flomenberg, overall success rates for bone marrow transplant today represent a modest improvement over a decade ago, but many more high-risk individuals are eligible and transplanted today. He notes that 65 percent of patients transplanted for acute myelogenous leukemia--patients in first remission--in 1979 lived for three years after diagnosis. “There are similar numbers now, but back then, we never transplanted patients over age 40,” he says. “Today we transplant patients who are far, far older, and there are some very good risk patients whom we don’t take to transplant in first remission any more. The survival is similar but in a much larger and higher risk group of patients.”

Dr. Flomenberg is an accomplished researcher as well. His work has been funded through several grants from the National Cancer Institute. His research interests center on ways to make allogeneic transplants (using a donor, rather than the patient’s own stem cells) safer. He is known for his efforts to expand the field of marrow/stem cell transplantation to include alternative donors. One of his areas of research focuses on haploidentical stem cell transplantation, which is an alternative option for many individuals who lack closely matched donors, and may eventually enable many more individuals to be eligible for transplantation.

Dr. Flomenberg received a bachelor of science degree from Penn State University in 1974, and earned a doctor of medicine degree from Jefferson Medical College in 1976 through a joint Jefferson-Penn State accelerated medical degree program.

He was a fellow in Hematology/Oncology at Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases in New York from 1979 to 1981, and a research fellow and research associate, respectively, from 1980 to 1981 and from 1981 to 1984 at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York.

From 1981 to 1982, Dr. Flomenberg was clinical assistant physician at Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases and an instructor in medicine at Cornell University Medical College. He was assistant attending physician at Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases from 1982 to 1990, and associate professor of medicine at Cornell University Medical College from 1990 to 1991. From 1991 to 1994, he was professor of medicine and microbiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

He has received numerous teaching and research awards and has published widely in such journals as Blood and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.