Vesna Najfeld, PhD

Dr. Najfeld is an internationally known cancer cytogeneticist who has made major contributions in advancing the concept of multistep clonal evolution in chronic myeloproliferative disorders and hematological malignancies. She established in 1981 an outstanding Tumor Cytogenetics clinical laboratory, which provides service utilizing state-of-the-art technology and methodology. She continues to be at the forefrontin advancing and implementing molecular cytogenetic technology for diagnostic and prognostic purposes of hematological malignancies and solid tumors. Her clinical laboratorycurrently performs over 15,000 cytogenetic and gene alteration clinical tests yearly.  Her pioneering research in delineating events involved in the step-wise pathogenesis of chronic myelogenous leukemia served as a ground breaking work for later investigations on the origin and pathogenesis of other hematological malignancies. She has been on editorial board of Leukemia, Blood, and Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics and organized three scientific symposia at the Mount Sinai Medical Center.  She is a scientific reviewer for 15 peer-reviewed journals.   She has served in many leadership positions nationally and was the only Ph.D. elected as President of the Society for the Study of Blood, the oldest US hematological society. Dr. Najfeld has given invited lectures throughout the world and is also a respected author of over 100 papers. She has mentored many postdoctoral students and fellows in Hematology/Oncology. Dr. Najfeld received the prestigious Richard E. Rosenfeld Faculty Achievement award from the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology in recognition for excellence in teaching and research in hematological malignancies.

Her current research focuses on chromosomal and gene alterations in the process of neoplastic development, specifically multistep pathogenesis and clonal development of Ph negative myeloproliferative neoplasm using FISH for intracellular diagnosis of gene rearrangements in clonally derived CD34+ cells. Her laboratory is the core cytogenetic lab for the NIH funded international program project for Myeloproliferative disease consortium.