Interview
If You Build It,
They Will Come
Founding Editor of
Shares His Vision
When Robert Negrin, MD, was
growing up in Silver Spring,
Maryland, if someone had told
his parents that their son would
one day become a professor of
medicine, they “would have just
laughed,” Dr. Negrin explained.
“I had no interest in science
as a kid. I actually wanted to
be a baseball player – until I
realized that I wasn’t any good at
baseball.”
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ASH Clinical News
While Dr. Negrin’s field of dreams may have
faded away, he has, to keep the analogy going,
been batting a thousand as a practicing
hematologist and researcher. Since the mid1980s, Dr. Negrin has held various key
positions at Stanford University Medical Center
in California, including his current role as
chief of the Division of Blood and Marrow
Transplantation.
He has also served as an associate editor of
Blood since 2010, and this year Dr. Negrin took
on the role of founding editor-in-chief of Blood
Advances, a new publication from the American
Society of Hematology (ASH).
Blood Advances will begin accepting
submissions for publication in late summer, and
the journal is scheduled to debut at the 58th ASH
Annual Meeting in San Diego in December. The
inaugural issue will be both print and online, but
after that, the journal will be strictly online.
“After 70 years of excellence in Blood, the
intersection of technological innovation and
rapid scientific discovery in hematology makes
now the perfect time for ASH to introduce
this new journal,” said 2016 ASH President
Charles S. Abrams, MD, of the University
of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in a written
statement. “Blood Advances will complement
ASH’s outstanding portfolio of high-caliber
scientific and clinical publications and set a new
standard in electronic publishing.”
Dr. Negrin spoke with ASH Clinical News
about his vision for Blood Advances, as well as
the road he has traveled during his more than 30
years in medicine.
Bringing Science to the People
Dr. Negrin earned a bachelor’s degree in
biochemistry from the University of California
Berkeley in 1977, then completed a graduate
program in physiological chemistry at the
University of Wisconsin in Madison. At that
point, Dr. Negrin was keen on basic science.
“I didn’t really want to get into medicine,” he
said. “I was not that interested in being a doctor
because I thought medicine was for competitive
people. So, I decided to be a biochemist.”
But it was during a celebration of what
should have been a highlight in his burgeoning
research career when Dr. Negrin realized basic
May 2016