City of Hope’s hematopathology fellowship program recently received a five-year accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the governing body for postgraduate medical education in the U.S.

“The five-year accreditation is the longest given to training programs, recognizing the high quality and standards of our program,” said Karl Gaal, M.D., director of the program since 1992 and one of its graduates.

Karl Gaal, center, with fellows Mingyi Chen, right, and Renuka Agrawal. (Photo by Thomas Brown)

The longest-running postgraduate training program at City of Hope, the hematopathology fellowship was begun in 1975 by highly respected hematopathologist Henry Rappaport, M.D., pathology chair from 1975 to 1986. Rappaport is perhaps best known for creating one of the first widely used classification systems for lymphoma.

Competition is intense for City of Hope’s one-year fellowship, and faculty leaders choose only three annually from about 20 applicants nationwide.

Applicants, who must have completed four years of medical school and four years of a pathology residency, are drawn to the reputation of the program and its faculty, such as Lawrence Weiss, M.D., the current chair of the Department of Pathology and an internationally recognized expert in lymphoma diagnosis.

The program’s newest pathology fellows, Mingyi Chen, M.D., Renuka Agrawal, M.D., and Hung Luu, M.D., will devote much of their time to peering through microscopes and learning how to make pathologic diagnoses of leukemia, lymphoma and a variety of clinical specimens critical to patient care.

In addition, fellows learn specialized testing in flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, molecular diagnostics and genetics, all critical tools for modern classification and prognostication of hematologic diseases.

The fellows form an important part of the pathology team at City of Hope, contributing to the care of patients through diagnosis and daily interactions with clinical colleagues in hematology and oncology.

“Our program has developed a national reputation,” said Weiss, “and our graduates have moved on to prestigious institutions across the country, from Cedars-Sinai, UCI and Loma Linda to the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.”