We have to face a number of challenges in hematology, and
one important challenge for me is equitable access, equitable
access to diagnostics, to treatments, to emerging
therapies across all regions. Another challenge is to create
inclusiveness, to take care of underrepresented countries and
to integrate them into research and clinical networks.
Another important challenge is to remove borders.
That's why we have our purpose. Borderless hematology.
Remove borders with regard to your graphical borders,
disciplinary borders, hierarchical borders, many, many
borders. Welcome to EHA Unplugged, the
official podcast channel of the European Hematology Association.
EHAI am your host Isabella Rivera.
Today we have the privilege of speaking with Professor
Constance Donor. She's the current EHA president
and she's the head of the section of Mylod malignancies at
the Department of Hematology at all University Hospital in
Germany. Professor Donor is renowned for
her clinical and scientific expertise in myeloproliferative
neoplasms and acute myeloid leukemia, AML.
In this episode, we'll explore her career in hematology, her
involvement with the HA, and her vision for the future of the
field. Thank you very much for being
with us today, Professor Donner. Thank you very much, Isabel, for
the kind invitation. I'm happy to give this
interview. Professor Donner, to start, we
would like to understand your journey hematology.
What attracted you to hematology?
So my journey started a while ago and it started when I was at
the late stage of medical school, in the last part of
medical school and I had to do a practical part in internal
medicine and internal medicine. At this time it was the
hematology department at the University of Heidelberg, and I
had no idea at this time what hematology means because at
medical school hematology was only a very, very small part of
our education. So I started my work there and I
was surprised by the heterogeneity of the different
diseases. I've never heard before the
opportunities we had that this time to treat patients.
And I was fascinated by these blood diseases, I must say,
because it was very practical. You need a microscope.
You look at the blood smear or the bone marrow smear, and you
learned a lot about the diseases.
And I was also fascinated by the patients because these patients
are different. You stay with them for a very
long time. You are with them during the
whole treatment period, and you have a kind of relationship to
them. And often they have to come back
for the next treatment. Yeah, it was a very emotional
experience for me and I was attracted at this time by the
heterogeneity of the different diseases and what we can do for
the patients. Your clinical work and your
research have focused on acute myeloid leukemia and
myeloproliferative neoplasms. Why did you focus on this
specifically? At this time I started to focus
on acute myeloid leukemia, a disease that is really an
emergency This in in hematology because people come to the
clinic and they are really, really sick and you have to
react immediately. You have to make decisions
immediately. And I was also fascinated
because at this time in our department at the University in
Hospital in Heidelberg, there was a group of people, they were
mainly interested in understanding the impact of
genetic alterations in acute myeloid leukemia.
And at this time we had not really much knowledge about the
impact of genetic alterations. We just knew that they play an
important role for the disease, for disease biology, but also
for outcome. And I had the chance to join a
group quite early in the Department of Hematology and to
start some very small research projects together with
collaborators at other scientific institutes in
Heidelberg. And I learned new techniques and
I learned to understand much better the biology of the
disease. So that was the main reason why
I decided to focus on acute myeloid leukemia.
And much later, the myeloproliferative malignancies,
the neoblasms became also my field of interest because these
are really rare, often diseases and nobody took care of these
patients because they are not acute, they have not an acute
leukemia, they have chronic leukemic diseases and acute
myeloid leukemia. And this myeloproliferative
neoblasms, they have a lot of commonalities also with regard
to biology. So it was obvious for me to also
include these MPNS in my focus of interest.
You have combined it in the years clinical and scientific
work. So you you see patients, you
take care of patients, but you're also doing research.
What? What do you find more
satisfying? So there is no priority, to be
honest, because my scientific work translated into clinical
work. So it's very translational
research. And I think this is the most
fascinating thing that you do research on the one side to get
some new insights on the biology findings that are new and you
can translate your findings into the care of patients, into
treatment of patients. And this was always something
that fascinated me, not to do basic research and do not know
what happens to your findings with regard to the patients.
It was always very satisfying to translate your findings directly
into patient care. Are you involved in education at
the university also? Yes.
So at university we have to do clinical management of the
patients, we have to do research and we have to do teaching.
So we are also responsible for teaching students from medical
school, but also PhD students in the lab or biologists in your
lab or medical students that are doing their thesis.
So you are responsible for teaching and education as well
in in the University Hospital? How did you come to EHA?
How do you become important in UK?
So because I was working from the very beginning in
hematology, it was at this time it was the only association that
was representing hematology in Europe.
And it was very clear for us that we want to show our
findings, that we want to represent our findings at
European meetings. And the EHA was from the very
beginning of the European meeting for hematology for our
department, for me. And I had the opportunity to go
to the Congress at a very early time point.
I was allowed to go there to present my abstract.
And I do remember very well, I went to the 1st Congress of EHA
in Brussels, which is a long time ago, and it was a
completely different meeting. So I think we had one, we had
something about 500 participants there.
And I must say I still Remember, Remember quite clearly seeing
all these very famous people you just knew from the papers and
they were touchable. So you can talk to them.
You had your poster presentation.
It was a very nice atmosphere. And you you felt to be part of
the community and to start collaborating and networking and
get to know the people who are interested in the same area.
So I still remember quite well these first EHA Congress in
Brussels. What were your first
contributions to EHA? So I mean the the first contact
was this Congress in Brussels to get to know to the people who
are working in hematology. We started collaborations
because of the networking, the networking opportunity at this
time. And for us it was very important
to submit our findings to this Congress.
So we had the chance to present the findings, to give the first
oral presentations that we have been very excited about and then
we crew up over the time we were invited.
I was an invited speaker at EHA. I joined some of the former HOPE
meetings representing the results from EHA Congress.
And over the time the network was growing and my engagement
was growing over the time with with this really great network
and the collaboration. And I was invited by EHA, for
example, to be part of the reviewing process for the
Congress. And we have to work really hard
and had several meetings to review all the abstracts for the
Congress, select invited speakers.
So this was a group of people growing together, getting to
know each other much better. And at a certain time point, I
was also interested to do more for EHA and there was the idea
to try to become a member of the board of the EHA board.
And this was in an in 2018. And you know, the process, which
is a very competitive process. But at this time, I I won the
ballot and I was very, very happy to be in the inner circle
of EHA, to become a board member and to do much more than I did
before and to get involved in many, many in the activities of
EHA. You have been involved a lot in
education in EHA also. Was that before being a member
of sport? So when I became a board member,
I was from the beginning of interested in outreach programs,
but also in education. And at a certain time point, I
had the chance to become the chair of the education
committee, which I really liked very, very much for several
reasons. Because education is one major
pillar, one major activity of EHA.
And I love to create courses for diseases that very important for
hematologists to update the courses, to provide updated
information in the field of hematology, but also to provide
mentorship in our mentorship programs.
And I also liked the concept and the strategy with regard to
career development, which is also part of education.
So many, many different aspects. And I really like the many, many
programs that we initiated and that we continued within the
education committee. And one highlight was for sure
the creation of the Lighting the Flame program.
This is a career development program for really young, very
young medical students or physicians that are just started
in medicine. And it was satisfying to get the
feedback and to see that education or with this education
programs you can really move things forward and you may be
contribute to standardized care of hematologic patients.
You have come a very long way in your involvement with the HA.
Now you're the president. As president of Eviche, what do
you see as the most significant challenges and opportunities in
hematology today? We have to face a number of
challenges in hematology, and one important challenge for me
is equitable access, equitable access to diagnostics, to
treatments, to emerging therapies across all regions.
So this is one major challenge. Another challenge is to create
inclusiveness, to take care of underrepresented countries and
to integrate them into research in clinical networks.
I think this is really very important.
Another important challenge is to remove borders.
That's why we have our purpose, borderless hematology, Remove
borders with regard to your graphical borders, disciplinary
borders, hierarchical borders, many, many borders.
I think this is another challenge we we are working on.
They are more challenges, like supporting countries with fewer
resources through our education programs and through training.
What is the most unexpected lesson that you have learned in
this period? It's not a very long time to be
honest, but I was very proud to see what we have achieved over
the last years. I was very proud to see how EHA
was and is still growing all the many activities, but I was also
surprised to see that there are that there is a broad
heterogeneity across Europe and beyond with regard to a standard
of care, with regard to medical needs, with regard to policy and
regulatory issues. So I think there's a lot of
things that we can still do and that we have to work on.
And this is fascinating on the one side.
But on the other side, as I said, I think EHA has developed
over this long period. I'm with EHA significantly and
we can be very proud of that. So what is your vision for EHA
in the next few years for the development of EHA and
hematology as a field? I would like to see that the
Community is further growing that we are speaking with one
voice across Europe and beyond that we fill the the needs and
the gaps of countries that are not having the same standard
then other countries support them, spread knowledge, nurture
knowledge and support career development across all the
different carrier stages that we see in hematology.
And there are many more aspects I think I I would like to see
over the next years. And these are aligned with our
agenda 20-30 with our strategy very nicely.
So I think this is something I would like to see a growing
community as we working on that very hard and to address these
equitable access issues in Europe and beyond.
So there's a lot to do. There's a lot to do, but I think
with all the activities that we have initiated over the last two
to three years, we are so much aligned with our mission and
vision, with our agenda for the next 5 to 6-7 years.
And we have a plan and it's always good to have a plan and
to work on the plan. And we have a wonderful network.
We have wonderful relationships with our national society
partners, so I'm I'm really looking forward to move on this
way. So if you want the audience to
remember one thing of this podcast, would it be?
So hematology is a fascinating field.
It's a great community. I grew up in this community.
I benefit a lot in this community.
EHA is a wonderful association, a wonderful organization to
support hematologists at all stages of their career.
It's a discipline that allows you to get connected, to
collaborate with many other disciplines.
And it's a rapidly evolving field.
Hematology and I have the feeling that we achieved a lot
over the last 20-30 years with regard to the treatment of our
patients. And this is our aim to improve
outcome of our patients. And I have a last message, could
only recommend join EHA, join the community.
Everyone will find an area where he she can contribute.
It's a great community with lots of very important activities.
Thank you very much, Professor Donner for this fascinating
interview and thank you to the audience for listening.
If you enjoyed this episode, please like it and please stay
tuned for more episodes of Eagium Plot.
Thank you very much, Isabel.