Our Childhood Leukemia Care Team

The leaders of our pediatric leukemia team have expertise in childhood leukemia and other pediatric cancers:

James Nachman, MD, a renowned cancer expert, is a leader in the Children’s Oncology Group’s acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) disease study committee. Dr. Nachman was the first to demonstrate that ALL patients, 16 - 21 years of age, had a significantly higher cure rate when treated on pediatric versus adult protocols. He serves on the oversight committees for several national and international leukemia programs, and is a sought after speaker on the role of new therapies in the cure of leukemia.

John Cunningham, MD, is an internationally recognized leader in the field of pediatric stem cell transplantation and has developed novel uses for this life-saving treatment. Dr Cunningham is using advanced genomic technologies to understand the leukemic cell, and is exploiting these new insights to develop novel therapies.

Kenan Onel, MD PhD, leads an effort to identify the inherited basis of leukemia in children and adolescents. As director of the Pediatric Familial Cancer Clinic, Dr. Onel employs state-of-the-art molecular diagnostics to find genes and genetic markers that alter cancer risk. This unique program, the only such service in the region, works collaboratively with the University of Chicago Cancer Risk Clinic.

Our team also includes other experts in the diagnosis and treatment of leukemia and other cancers:

• Michelle LeBeau, PhD, Is the director of the University of Chicago Cancer Research Center and the Cancer Cytogenetics Laboratory. All leukemia cell samples are examined in her lab. A professor of medicine and human genetics, Dr. LeBeau has made major contributions to the understanding of genetic abnormalities in leukemia.
• James Vardiman, MD, and John Anastasi, MD, are hematopathologists who play a critical role in the diagnosis of leukemia. Because of their high level of expertise and state-of-the art techniques, their diagnostic lab receives blood samples from around the nation.
• Philip Connell, MD, is an expert in radiotherapy with an emphasis on radiation oncology for pediatric malignancies.

A Multidisciplinary Team Approach

Our leukemia specialists and other hematologist/oncologists work with a team of experts that also includes radiation oncologists, pediatric surgeons, interventional and diagnostic radiologists, hematopathologists, cytogeneticists, advanced practice nurses, child life specialists and social workers. This multidisciplinary team holds regular joint conferences to discuss each patient’s case and to design individualized treatment plans.