Sarah Tasian, MD
Richard Aplenc, MD, PhD, MSCE
The Division of Oncology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has appointed Sarah Tasian, MD, as Chief of the Section of Hematologic Malignancies. Dr. Tasian succeeds Richard Aplenc, MD, PhD, MSCE, who served in this role for 13 years. Dr. Tasian will oversee a group of faculty, instructors, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers, and clinical and laboratory research staff within the Cancer Center at CHOP.
A pediatric oncologist and physician-scientist at CHOP and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Dr. Tasian’s primary area of interest is the development of molecularly targeted therapeutics for children with high-risk leukemias. She earned her medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine with election to the Alpha Omega Alpha academic medical honor society. Dr. Tasian was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute–-National Institutes of Health Research Scholar during medical school and trained in pediatrics at Seattle Children’s Hospital/University of Washington and in pediatric hematology-oncology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Tasian is a recognized expert in pediatric childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), as well as a dedicated mentor of trainees. Her bench-to-bedside and bedside-back-to-bench translational laboratory research program focuses upon testing of kinase inhibitors and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell immunotherapies in high-risk genetic subsets of childhood ALL and AML.
Dr. Tasian has received several teaching awards and holds multiple leadership roles in the Children’s Oncology Group Acute Myeloid Leukemia and Myeloid Diseases committees and Leukemia Lymphoma Society PedAL/EuPAL consortium.
