Trudy Nan Small, MD, was a pediatric hematologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who specialized in the diagnosis and care of children undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for hematologic malignancies and those with life-threatening genetic disorders of the immune system. She died on June 14, 2013.
Dr. Small’s research focused on the cellular interactions that control recovery of the immune system after transplantation, and provided the first evidence linking age-related changes in the human thymus with the delayed restoration of cell-mediated immunity observed in older adults after transplantation. She also conducted pioneering studies examining how best to vaccinate patients after transplantation or other cancer treatments so as to most effectively stimulate their newly transplanted immune systems and protect patients from infections.
Her work provided evidence critical to the development of the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for vaccination of immunocompromised transplant recipients. She was also an authority on lethal genetic immune deficiencies and the application of HLA-matched sibling and half-matched parent-derived marrow transplants to correct them.
Dr. Small received her MD degree from SUNY Upstate Medical University and completed residencies at Duke University Medical Center and the University of Minnesota. After completing a fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, she joined the faculty in 1987 and thereafter rose to its highest rank of full Member. She was also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College.
She will be deeply missed. ■
