The Division faculty actively participate in medical student teaching, providing clinical mentoring while serving as attending physicians on the Division’s subspecialty services at the University of Michigan’s hospitals and at the VA Medical Center and providing clinical mentorship to M3 students in our ambulatory clinics. Dr. Paula Bockenstedt is the leader for the Hematology/Oncology M2 Sequence.

This sequence represents a two week educational initiative in which 16 members of the Division faculty provided 95 hours of lecture, small group, and laboratory teaching. In postgraduate education, the Division provides opportunities for training in the medical subspecialties of hematology and medical oncology with an emphasis on preparing trainees for careers in academic medicine. Dr. Scott Gitlin, with the assistance of Dr. Gregory Kalemkerian and the input of a Fellowship Education Advisory Committee, provides outstanding leadership for the Fellowship Training Program. Many Division faculty serve as participants on fellows’ mentorship committees, designed to promote the career development activities of our fellows. The Division offers a core curriculum on topics related to specific disease entities in hematology and oncology as supplemented by a journal club, clinical case conference, morbidity and mortality conference, core curriculum conference, and a clinical case discussion conference, for subspecialty trainees. The core curriculum includes a 25 week Introduction to Clinical Research Workshop, with a broadened academic career development component, under the continued leadership of Drs. Dan Hayes and Scott Gitlin. Topics include the development of clinical research protocols, biostatistical analysis of clinical research data, regulatory requirements for conduct of clinical research, grantsmanship skills, oral presentation skills, effective writing skills, perspectives on laboratory-, clinical-, translational- and industry-investigation careers, etc. During FY08, the Training Program included 16 trainees with the recruitment of six fellows who began their training in July 2007. The Program continued to be supported by an NIH training grant as well as funding from the Elsa U. Pardee Foundation, the Walther Cancer Institute, Sanofi-Aventis, Astra Zeneca, Celgene, and Ortho Biotech.

Research Programs

Peres, Reddy, Yanik, and Zhang); molecular coagulation (Dr. Bockenstedt); clinical pharmacology and experimental therapeutics (Drs. Ahmed, Al-Zoubi, Baker, Blayney, Brenner, Campagnaro, Chugh, Ensminger, Erba, Donato, Griggs, Hayes, Henry, Hussain, Jakubowiak, Kalemkerian, Kujawski, Schneider, Schott, Schuetze, Silver, Smerage, Smith, Talpaz, Urba, Van Poznak, Wang, Worden, and Zalupski); and cancer epidemiology and prevention (Drs. Brenner, Cooney, Griggs, Kakarala and Lao). The strengths of these research programs (laboratory and clinical) are reflected by the continued success of Division faculty in attracting significant grant support (see Figs. 1-5) which totaled $42.5M in FY07 (a 10% decrease in direct plus indirect funding compared to the previous fiscal year) including $23.2M in direct funds from federal (NIH, Department of Defense, and VA) sources (a 23% decrease over FY06), and $10.0M in direct funds from non-federal sources (a 45% increase from FY06). Included in this funding portfolio, the Division is credited with $12M in NCI support for the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG); excluding the SWOG NCI funding in both years, the FY07 total actually increased over FY06 by 10.5%. $24.7M in new grant funding (laboratory and clinical) was awarding in FY07. Pending applications totaled $6.9M. As a measure of investigative productivity, direct funding per square foot of research space is $853. 903 patients were enrolled in clinical research protocols.