Sanjay S. Patel, M.D., MPH

2019 Benjamin Castleman Award

Dr. Patel completed graduate training in immunology and public health at the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, MA, through which he obtained MSc and MPH degrees. He subsequently completed his medical training at the Saint George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada, West Indies. Dr. Patel developed a passion for understanding the pathologic basis of disease during medical school, particularly in the area of hematology-oncology. This initial foray into hematopathology culminated in a brief review of primary effusion lymphoma, published in Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. As a resident in anatomic and clinical pathology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI, Dr. Patel pursued the study of mantle cell lymphoma, inspired by his mentor, Dr. David Yang. Their work, primarily using a tissue microarray for multiplex immunohistochemistry and digital image analysis, resulted in three USCAP abstracts, and provided Dr. Patel a significant introduction to this powerful and cutting-edge technology. Concurrently, Dr. Patel contributed to basic science projects centered on plasma cell myeloma (with Dr. Fotis Asimakopoulos, University of Wisconsin) and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia/lymphoma (with Dr. Ruben Carrasco, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute), resulting in publications in Blood and Blood Advances, respectively. He also developed an appreciation for quality improvement in pathology and worked with Dr. Catherine Leith, and others, on a bone marrow biopsy quality improvement initiative, the findings from which were recently published in the International Journal of Laboratory Hematology.

As a clinical fellow in hematopathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Patel began working with Drs. Olga Weinberg and Robert Hasserjian to better understand the prognostic implications of various clinicopathologic and genetic parameters in de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with mutated NPM1. As a part of this analysis, he identified a strong correlation between mutant allele burden at diagnosis and poor clinical outcome, and these findings resulted in a recent first-author publication in Blood. Moving forward, Dr. Patel and his mentors seek to further dissect the basis for their initial finding including analysis of mutant protein expression patterns and minimal residual disease, with the hopes of better risk-stratifying patients with this very common subtype of AML.

In the year following his clinical fellowship, Dr. Patel will assume a position as the first Geraldine S. Pinkus Fellow in Translational Research. During this year, he will be changing gears and placing a greater emphasis on the study of lymphoma biology and the tumor microenvironment (TME) under the guidance of Dr. Scott Rodig, using classic Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) as a model system. He ultimately aims to carry his experiences and training into a faculty position as a clinical hematopathologist, focusing broadly on areas of lymphoma- and leukemogenesis, while also maintaining a significant commitment to trainee education