Leading City of Hope Hematologists Appointed to New Positions

Larry Kwak, MD, PhD, has been appointed the deputy director of City of Hope’s Hematologic Malignancies and Stem Cell Transplantation Institute.

In this newly created role, Kwak will help oversee the centers within the institute, including recruitment, clinical and laboratory research, and faculty development, in partnership with Stephen J. Forman, MD, the Francis & Kathleen McNamara Distinguished Chair in Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, and director of the institute.

Kwak will retain his titles as director of the Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center, vice president and deputy director of the comprehensive cancer center, and as the Dr. Michael Friedman Professor in Translational Medicine.

Named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People,” Kwak joined City of Hope in 2015. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians, and is the recipient of the Chang-Yul Oh Memorial Award from the Korean Medical Association and the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine, considered the “Nobel Prize of Korea.”

“The institute has a growing national and international reputation, and we believe we are the place a patient should come to be treated,” Forman said. “Given the size and breadth of the institute and the depth of his experience and knowledge, we are confident that Dr. Kwak is an ideal candidate to help the institute continue to grow and flourish.”

“I plan to leverage my experience as deputy director of the comprehensive cancer center to work with Dr. Forman to establish high performing teams excelling at patient care and research,” Kwak said of the appointment. “One way we can do that is to capture team science research grants, like the NCI Lymphoma SPORE grant and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society SCOR we led together earlier this year. I’m excited to devote my efforts to investing in our faculty talent and leveraging our tremendous resources to enable the continued realization of our vision of being a world-class blood cancer clinical and research institute.”

Tanya Siddiqi, MD, Takes On New Role

Tanya Siddiqi, MD, associate clinical professor in City of Hope’s Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, has been appointed director of the Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) Program within the Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center, one of the seven disease and modality centers within the Hematologic Malignancies and Stem Cell Transplantation Institute.

In this additional role, she will oversee research efforts to advance the search for a cure in this disease, including the growth and maintenance of the CLL patient tissue bank that she has already developed.

She will conduct translational studies in collaboration with lab researchers, some of which are already underway, and she will be investigating novel treatments for CLL, including innovative work with CAR T cell therapy as an immunotherapy.

Siddiqi will also continue to lead CLL phase 1, 2 and 3 national and international clinical trials at City of Hope, in partnership with investigators from other academic medical centers, national cooperative intergroups and pharmaceutical companies. Some of these trials have led to regulatory approval of ibrutinib in the treatment of CLL. Siddiqi has presented her research at national and international conferences.

Siddiqi is an accomplished hematologist-oncologist who specializes in diagnosing and treating blood cancers, in particular CLL and B cell non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (B-NHL). She is the supervising physician of City of Hope’s anti-coagulation clinic.

In addition to her new role, Siddiqi will continue her work in the Gehr Family Center for Leukemia Research and will continue to serve as a member on the CLL/hairy cell leukemia, as well as the venous thromboembolic disease panels of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, of which City of Hope is a founding member.