Malignant Hematology & Transplant with Dr. Yi-Bin Chen | AML, MDS, Leukemia, GVHD

PrecisCa Oncology Podcast : Precision Cancer Insights

On this episode, PrecisCa speaks with Yi-Bin Chen MD, MS. Dr. Chen is the Director of the Transplant and Cell Therapy program at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School -- uniting the programs of conventional transplant and emerging cellular therapies. His clinical interests mainly revolve around improving the outcomes of patients undergoing autologous and allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Dr. Chen sits down with us to answer the following questions:

• When should a patient with new MDS or leukemia be referred to a transplant center, and what key considerations may support early and broad referral?
• How do the associations of certain mutations with good or poor prognosis influence your treatment of patients with newly diagnosed MDS who have undergone next-generation sequencing?
• What factors influence your decision to utilize a haploidentical transplant for AML?
• What is your preferred approach for treating chronic GVHD, and what factors influence your choice of initial systemic therapy vs. subsequent lines of therapy?
• How do you select the combination of conditioning regimen and GVHD prophylaxis for a patient undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplant?
• How do you interpret the recent data on maintenance TKI after allogeneic stem cell transplantation in FLT3 mutated AML, and would you recommend it or save TKI for any relapse of disease?

Yi-Bin Chen grew up in New Jersey. He majored in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, earning a B.S./M.S. at Yale University before attending medical school at Harvard Medical School. Subsequently, Dr. Chen did his internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, including an additional year as Chief Resident. This was followed by a fellowship in hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Mass General Brigham combined program. In 2008, he joined the staff of the Blood & Marrow Transplant (BMT) Program at the MGH Cancer Center, has served as Director of Clinical Research since 2012 and was named overall Program Director in 2016. In 2020, he was named Director of the Hematopoietic Cell Transplant and Cell Therapy Program, uniting the programs of conventional transplant and emerging cellular therapies. His clinical interests mainly revolve around improving the outcomes of patients undergoing autologous and allogeneic stem cell transplantation. He has led original clinical trials involving all aspects of BMT, including conditioning regimens, alternative graft sources, novel approaches concerning the prevention and therapy of acute and chronic graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) and the use of maintenance therapies after BMT. He collaborates extensively with local and national colleagues as well as industry in addition to developing his own original clinical trials. He currently lives in Needham, MA with his wife and two children.