Lionel Adès is Professor of hematology at the Hôpital Saint-Louis, and Paris Diderot University, Paris, France. He graduated in Haematology in 2001 and then undertook training in haematology at the Avicenne Hospital and the St Louis Hospital in Paris, before taking up his current position. Pr. Adès has extensive research experience, having worked as a research fellow from 2006-2010 before graduated with a PhD in 2010. He is conducting several clinical and biological studies in myelodysplastic syndromes and acute leukemia. In these disorders, he has been very active in evaluating novel therapeutics and implementing clinical trials. His research has been published in numerous, well respected journals, including Journal of Clinical Oncology, New England Journal of Medicine and Blood. In addition, Lionel Adès is a member of the American Society of Hematology, the French Group of Myelodysplastic Syndromes (GFM), EMSCO and the ALFA Group.

David received his MD/PhD at New York University School of Medicine where he studied biochemistry and cell fate decisions in the laboratory of Dr. Danny Reinberg. He performed further clinical training at Columbia University in Internal Medicine and the National Institutes of Health in clinical genetics. David performed his postdoctoral research with Dr. Dan Kastner at the National Human Genome Research Institute studying the genetics and mechanism underlying a subset of rheumatic diseases called autoinflammatory syndromes. David’s work focused on discovering and characterizing new genetic diseases, including VEXAS syndrome which he will talk about today. David joined the faculty at New York University School of Medicine last year to run a translational program studying autoinflammatory diseases, including VEXAS syndrome, both in the clinic and in the laboratory. His independent work focuses on trying to identify genetic causes of diseases in patients, and use laboratory investigation to help provide insights for clinical care. He has won several awards including Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Awards for Medical Scientists, K99/R00, and NIH Director’s award.

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John M. Bennett, M.D. Dr. Bennett is Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center, in Rochester, New York. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his medical degree from Boston University. Postgraduate training included an internship at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, a residency in medicine at Beth Israel Hospital, a fellowship in hematology at Boston City Hospital and Tufts University. From 1963-1966 he was head of the hematology laboratories at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He served in the USPHS as Head of the diagnostic bone marrow laboratories in the NIH/Clinical Center from 1966-1968 in Hematopathology. He was the first Clinical Director of the University of Rochester Cancer Center (Wilmot), appointed in 1974; a position he held until 1995. Dr. Bennett has contributed close to 600 publications to the medical literature as well as several books and was Editor-in-Chief of the Leukemia Research Journal from 1993-2013. He is currently employed, part-time, in the Hematopathology Division, where he consults, daily, on the classification of Myeloid Neoplasms.

Dr. Elsa Bernard is a computational cancer scientist with strong interest in studying myelodysplastic syndromes and other myeloid malignancies. She combines cancer genomic techniques with statistical learning to describe the molecular underpinning of the disease, integrate molecular and clinical data, and build predictive and prognostic models. She works closely with clinicians, pathologists and biologists to bring the latest genomic discovery into effective clinical decision support tools. She is part of the International Working Group for the prognosis of MDS.

Prof Didier Blaise, MD: Aix Marseille Univ (AMU), Management Sport Cancer Lab (MSC EA4670) Institut Paoli Calmettes (IPC) Marseille, France Didier Blaise, MD is professor of hematology at Aix Marseille University. He is director of the transplant and cellular immunotherapy program at Institut Paoli Calmettes, Marseille. He has contributed to more than 600 peer reviewed publications. His major focuses are optimization of innovation in allogeneic transplantation, and social an economic evaluation of innovation.

Andrew Brunner, MD, is an assistant in medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston. Dr Brunner’s clinical focus is for the treatment of patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), as well as other cancers of the blood and bone marrow. His research focuses on the development of novel therapeutic strategies (typically phase 1 and 2 clinical trials) for patients with MDS and AML. He has been involved in studies that explore unique targets in these cancers, including mutations in the spliceosome, or targets expressed on immune effector cells. At the same time, he researches patient outcomes in MDS, including ways to better understand why certain patients have better responses to treatment than others, and which treatment responses are more meaningful to patients. Overall he seeks to discover novel treatments in MDS which improve survival and patient quality of life. He receives funding support from the Edwards P. Evans Foundation to support his career as an innovative clinical/translational investigator in MDS, and from the NIH Leukemia SPORE at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.