SOP Seminar: "Emergence of Smart Therapies to Treat Lymphomas and Leukemias"

The School of Pharmacy at the Lebanese International University, Bekaa Campus organized a scientific seminar on Monday, 30th of October, 2017, entitled: "Emergence of Smart Therapies to Treat Lymphomas and Leukemias" . The seminar was conducted by Dr. Mohamed A. Kharfan-Dabaja, MD, MBA, FACP and was attended by the faculty members of School of pharmacy (SOP) and other schools, PharmD students, and pharmacy students. Dr. Rahal, Dean of SOP, awarded an appreciation trophy to the speaker.

Our guest speaker, Dr. Mohamed A. Kharfan-Dabaja is a Professor of Oncologic Sciences and Senior Member of the Department of Blood and Marrow Transplantation of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Medical Oncology and Hematology. His area of expertise focuses on developing reduced-intensity conditioning regimens for allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT), including haploidentical transplantation, for hematologic malignancies particularly lymphoid neoplasms. He is the principal investigator and lead author of the current clinical practice recommendations for allogeneic HCT for chronic lymphocytic leukemia and for HCT for mature T-cell lymphomas, on behalf of the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (ASBMT).

He is currently serving as a member of the Guidelines Committee of ASBMT. Dr. Kharfan-Dabaja started his presentation with an overview of cancer, its causes, and its incidence across genders. He then discussed the traditional anticancer therapies available but his main focus was on novel therapies for the treatment of leukemias and lymphomas where he discussed the emergence of immunotherapy, antibody-drug conjugates, checkpoint blockade antibodies, and other targeted therapies.

The impressive seminar was followed by an open discussion as the attendees were actively involved in it to gain more knowledge about such therapies.