Derek Lynn Stirewalt

Patient Care Philosophy
Dr. Stirewalt current attends on both the inpatient and outpatient transplant services at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. He believes those patients suffering from the devastating diseases that require such aggressive procedures should be offered only the best and most companionate care.

Scope Of Care
Dr. Stirewalt provides care and consultation to patients with a wide variety of different blood (i.e., “hematopoietic”) malignancies. These hematopoietic malignancies include Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML); Acute Lymphoid Leukemia (ALL); Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML); Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL); Lymphoma; Multiple Myeloma; and Myelodysplasia (MDS). He has a particular interest in AML and MDS, which are the focus of much of his laboratory research.

Personal Interests
Dr. Stirewalt is married and enjoys tennis and golf.

Clinical Interests
Medical advancement of treatment of leukemia; research on tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes in the pathogenis of leukemia.

Research Interests
The overall goals of the Stirewalt lab are to identify novel biomarkers of hematopoietic malignancies and to understand how the biomarkers may function to promote the development of these diseases. Collectively, the purpose of this research is to improve the care of patients who are at risk for hematologic malignancies or harbor these diseases. To meet these goals, Dr. Stirewalt has three primary research focuses.    
 
Study of Novel AML Prognostic and Therapeutic Biomarkers.  
The Stirewalt  lab was one of the first to examine the clinical significance FLT3 mutations in AML. This work led to the acceptance of FLT3 internal tandem duplications (ITDs) as being one of the most common and predictive prognostic factors for AML patients – especially those AML patients with normal cytogenetics. Subsequent studies from the Stirewalt lab have found that the biology and clinical significance of FLT3 mutations differ, depending upon the size of the mutation, its location within the gene, and other cooperative molecular events. 

Currently, the lab's FLT3 research focuses on understanding the mechanism driving the heterogeneous molecular biology and clinical significance of FLT3 mutations in AML. These studies are utilizing array platforms to examine expression differences of reference sequences and novel isoforms between samples harboring FLT3 mutations of varying sizes and with different allelic ratios. The lab is also prospectively examining the prognostic significance of the different FLT3 mutations in a large SWOG AML study.
   
The Stirewalt lab and others have found that AML is a relatively heterogeneous disease – even within specific cytogenetic and mutational subgroups. Therefore, there is a definite need for additional prognostic biomarkers to better risk-stratify AML patients.

Languages
English

Expertise
Blood disorders (Hematology), Cancer Care (Medical Oncology), Transplantation