Janis Abkowitz, MD

Physician-scientist Dr. Janis Abkowitz, researches the molecular and cellular events that control the growth of red blood cells in the bone marrow and how this process goes awry to result in anemia. She is especially interested in the anemia that occurs in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) as a result of infective erythropoiesis, or the death of red cell precursors while they mature. As an oncologist/hematologist, she treats people with inappropriately low or high numbers of blood cells. These diseases include anemia, pancytopenia, MDS, thrombocytopenia, polycythemia vera and essential thrombocytosis.

Dr. Abkowitz is a past president of the American Society of Hematology and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, American Academy of Physicians and the National Academy of Medicine. A dedicated mentor with 35 years of continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health, she’s received many honors over the years, including being named the 2023 Danny Thomas lecturer at St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and the 2018 Helen Ranney lecturer at the University of California. Currently, she is studying MDS and ineffective erythropoiesis more broadly with the intent of understanding its physiology and deriving new therapies.