Giants of Cancer Care® Program Inductees

LEUKEMIA

Frederick R. Appelbaum, MD

Executive Vice President and Deputy Director at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Frederick R. Appelbaum, MD, is internationally known for his work in the development of transformative therapies for leukemias, lymphomas, and other blood cancers.
While at the NCI, he led the research team that demonstrated the first successful use of autologous bone marrow transplantation in 1978. Today, more than 40,000 patients with hematologic malignancies receive autologous transplants annually.
After moving to Fred Hutch to work with the late Nobel laureate Dr E. Donnall Thomas, Dr Appelbaum led the first studies demonstrating the ability of allogeneic transplantation to cure myelodysplasia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and Hodgkin disease, and the superiority of allogeneic transplantation over chemotherapy as treatment for AML.
He was a key contributor to the discovery and development of gemtuzumab ozogamicin (Mylotarg), an anti-CD33 drug conjugate used to treat AML, which was the first FDA-approved antibody-drug conjugate.
Dr Appelbaum formed the first multicenter bone marrow transplant clinical trials group in 1980, an approach that foreshadowed the development of the federally funded Bone Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network.
Dr Appelbaum is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Association of Cancer Research Academy, and received the E. Donnall Thomas Award from the American Society of Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation in 2013.

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