Azra Raza, M.D.
Attending Physician
MDS Program
Dr. Raza is an internationally recognized specialist in myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and related diseases
and is head of the MDS Program at St. Vincent's Comprehensive Cancer Center. Most recently Dr. Raza was a
Professor of Medicine, and the Chief of Hematology Oncology at the University of Massachusetts, Worcester, MA.
Dr. Raza completed her pre-medical and medical education in Karachi, Pakistan, securing first position out of
more than 13,000 pre-medical students, and earning a gold medal as well as a merit scholarship for five years
of medical school. During her medical education, she was the recipient of numerous gold medals as well. Dr.
Raza completed her training in Internal Medicine at the University of Maryland, Franklin Square Hospital and
Georgetown/VA Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
She finished her fellowship in Medical Oncology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, and
stayed on from 1980 to 1989, to become Head of the Section of Cell Biology. She started her work in the
cellular dynamics of the bone marrows in patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and Myelodysplastic Syndromes
(MDS) at that institution and has been continuously funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since 1984.
She moved briefly to Cincinnati, Ohio and then to Chicago, Illinois in 1992, where she successfully established
the single most clinically active and well-funded basic research program in the study of Myelodysplastic Syndrome
and the leukemias that arise from them.
Dr. Raza has received multiple grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Raza has authored 230
full-length papers, 16 book chapters, 550 abstracts, and edited a book solely devoted to Myelodysplastic
Syndrome and Secondary Leukemias. She has been an invited speaker at most major Universities in the United States,
as well as at National and International meetings in the last decade. Dr. Raza has mentored dozens of clinical
fellows as well as basic research scientists over the last two decades, many of whom have become successful
independent investigators. She has been the Director of an exceptionally productive basic research lab including
more than a dozen outstanding PhDs and MDs, and sees more MDS patients as a single physician in one year than any
Cancer Center in the US, totaling 500-600 cases per year.
Dr. Raza has moved her program to the University of Massachusetts and now to St. Vincent's Comprehensive Cancer
Center in New York City, making it the place where patients come from all over the country, seeking the latest,
cutting edge therapies for MDS. The strength of this program rests upon prompt translation of biologic insights
into improved therapies for patients. The best evidence is the development of the novel anti-cytokine strategy
of treatment for MDS patients based on the pioneering observation made by Dr. Raza's group that the reason for
cytopenias in MDS patients is an excessive cytokine-mediated apoptosis of hematopoietic cells. Dr. Raza serves
on numerous National and International panels as a reviewer, consultant and advisor.
Dr. Raza's Personal Statement.
Dr. Azra Raza's essays published on 3quarksdaily.com:
July 17, 2006 Stephen Wolfram's New Kind of Science
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/07/rx_paradigm_shi.html
June 19, 2006 Ian McEwan, medical ethics and plagiarism
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/06/rx_ian_mcewan_m.html
May 01, 2006 Harvey David Preisler
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/05/rx_harvey_david.html
April 03, 2006 Thalidomide and Cancer
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/04/rx_thalidomide_.html
March 06, 2006 Germs Are Us
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/03/germs_are_us.html
February 06, 2006 Sand piles and Cancer
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/02/rx_sand_piles_a.html
January 09, 2006 Reductionist vs. Pluralist Views of Cancer
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/01/rx.html
December 05, 2005 Spicing Cancer Treatment
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2005/12/empty.html
November 07, 2005 The War on Cancer
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2005/11/empty_post_1.html
