A 17-Year Experience of a Large Dedicated Fellowship in Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy: A Blueprint for Modern Day Training Program.

Abstract

The field of allogeneic blood and marrow transplantation-cellular therapy (BMT-CT) has evolved through incremental advances. Engineered donor grafts, gene editing and chimeric antigen receptor T-cells are all standard clinical practice. Consequently, the scientific knowledge and complexity of clinical skills needed for next generation of BMT-CT physicians have increased. We report a 17-year experience of arguably the largest 12-month BMT-CT clinical fellowship program in the USA. Seventy-three (73) trainees were accepted and 2 cohorts that reflected different time periods (2007-1016 and 2017-2024, inclusive) and different core training curriculum were compared. The cohorts were equivalent in terms of demographics; notably, most (70%) had graduated from international medical schools and trained in the US on a non-immigrant J1 visa. In 2015, we introduced a structured mentoring program to address the desire of trainees for experience with scholarly activities. There was a high rate of successful academic careers with a trend toward a higher likelihood of academic retention following structured mentoring (70% vs 89%). In this report, we included our detailed core curriculum and highlight potential future changes as a blueprint for modern day programs to ensure that graduate "transplant docs" can continue to contribute at the highest academic level.