Folashade Otegbeye, MBChB, MPH

What fueled your interest in studying blood cancers and transplant medicine?

During my medical training and practice in Nigeria, I was frustrated by a lack of access to care. Though there were therapies in wealthier countries for cancers like Burkitt lymphoma, in Nigeria, our physicians understood the theory of the disease but often were unable to treat it. This interest brought me to the Harvard School of Public Health. Following that, I pursued a blood cancer fellowship in Cleveland, which led me into my career in transplant medicine.

What inspired your interest in medicine?

I have always been a scientist, studying and growing living things. It started with growing plants. My father was a plant geneticist who worked on breeding trees. When I was a child, my siblings and I all had our own private plots of land, just to grow things. With my father's encouragement, I grew corn, soybeans, rice and tomatoes in my garden.

Provider Background

Specialty: Medical Oncology

Blood stem cell transplantation

I am a clinical researcher specializing in blood stem cell transplantation for blood cancers and other diseases of the blood and marrow. In the lab, I study the immunology of transplant and immune cell therapy for a variety of cancers. As facility director of the Hutch’s Therapeutic Products shared resource, which develops and manufactures biologic and cellular therapeutic products for Phase 1/2 clinical trials, I work with the Hutch’s cellular immunotherapy labs to translate research ideas into clinical products. My research in the clinic is aimed at improving transplant care for people with bone marrow failure syndromes and myeloproliferative disorders, in which blood cells grow abnormally in the marrow.