“Hematopathology deals with the practical issues of diagnosis, but also helps the pathologist understand the disease.” – Dr. Elaine Jaffe
I was always interested in biology. As a kid I would collect lizards and stones and odd things like that. I became a zoology major as an undergraduate at Cornell University, and then decided pretty early on that I wanted to go to medical school. My motivation was to understand human disease. After my pathology course during my second year of medical school, I was hooked. I knew that was exactly what I wanted to do. Looking through a microscope is looking at a snapshot of disease. What fascinated me was being able to understand the pathophysiology of disease just from looking under a microscope.
For many years pathology was based on microscopic images, H&E and later, immunohistochemistry. Today pathology is becoming much more genomically-based. The field is clearly evolving in that direction. In lymphoma and leukemia, in particular, I think we’ve led the field in this direction in terms of integrating genetic and genomic information with diagnosis.
We felt that there was a need for a diagnostic book that focused on hematopathology that was for both the pathologist and the clinician. Our audience includes specialists in hematopathology and in general surgical pathology. The book emphasizes differential diagnosis, diagnostic aids, and covers normal hematopathology, lymphoma, leukemia, and diseases of the histiocytic system comprehensively. Hematopathology deals with the practical issues of diagnosis, but also helps the pathologist understand the disease.
Elaine S. Jaffe, MD is a Senior Investigator at the National Cancer Institute, where her research focuses on the classification and definition of lymphoid neoplasms. She also serves as Clinical Professor of Pathology at the George Washington University School of Medicine. She is among the 10 most highly cited researchers in clinical medicine for the field of oncology. She has served on the editorial boards of The American Journal of Pathology, The American Journal of Surgical Pathology, Blood Cancer Research, and Modern Pathology, among others, and was a senior editor for the WHO monographs on leukemia and lymphoma. She is an editor of the text Hematopathology.
Dr. Jaffe served as president of the Society for Hematopathology, as well as the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was Chair of the Medical Sciences Section. Among Dr. Jaffe’s awards are the Fred. W. Stewart Award from the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Mostofi Award from the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, and the Distinguished Clinical Teacher Award from the NIH Fellows Committee. In 2008 Dr. Jaffe received the Honoris Causa from the University of Barcelona in 2008 and the Chugai Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Scholarship from the American Society of Investigative Pathology.
