2021 Honorary members part 1: Former EBMT President Professor Andrea Bacigalupo
GS1 Opening Ceremony - Sunday, March 14, 18:00 - 19:15, Auditorium 1
The EBMT Executive Committee has had the pleasure to award four lifetime Honorary Memberships for the 2021 meeting. In each of the four editions of this newsletter, one Honorary Member will give a short interview on their involvement with EBMT and their feelings on receiving this distinction. The first interview is with former EBMT President (1998-2002) Professor Andrea Bacigalupo, based at Catholic Univeristy, Rome, Italy.
“It has been a great pleasure and an honour to learn that I will be granted the EBMT Honorary Membership at this 2021 meeting,” says Professor Bacigalupo. “I have been involved in EBMT since 1977, when the annual meeting – then in a ski resort - was organised with just 30-40 participants!”
He clearly remembers the excitement when cyclosporin was announced/introduced at the EBMT meeting in Sils Maria (1980), this time in a room with slightly more participants: around 50. Professor Bacigalupo is also proud of the work he himself did organising three EBMT meetings in the Alps (Courmayeur) in 1982, 1986 and 1998.
He reflects: “The EBMT has grown a lot in the past 4 decades, to become a strong international society, providing a fantastic network and promoting knowledge, research and clinical procedures: the latter is particularly important in the rapidly evolving world of cellular therapy. It was my privilege to serve as EBMT Secretary in the 1980s, with my mentor, the late Alberto Marmont as President, then as chairperson of the Aplastic Anemia Working Party, and then as EBMT President 1998-2002.”
He adds: “I have always believed that electronic documentation is the best way to try and understand what we are doing, and design changes in our transplant programs. This involves data reporting and data management and it was good to work closely with Ronald Brand, at the time the Promise database was being developed. Over the years it was a great privilege to make lots of friends in the European community. Let’s see if I can remember the EBMT Presidents…Bruno Speck, Eliane Gluckman, Ted Gordon Smith, Alberto Marmont, Ghosta Gahrton, John Goldman, Alois Gratwohl, Jane Apperley, Dietger Niederwieser, Alejandro Madrigal, Mohamad Mohty, Nicolaus Kroeger…I am sure I missed somebody!! And of course I have made many more good friends as well as all the presidents – too many people to list here!”
As a transplanter, Professor Bacigalupo took over the transplant program in Genova San Martino, when Alberto Marmont retired in 1989, and continued in this role until 2014. He then moved to Gemelli Hospital in Rome, to become Professor of Haematology at the Catholic University in Rome, and open a new transplant unit. His interest has been focused on allogeneic transplants, graft versus host disease and graft versus leukaemia. Aplastic anaemia has been the other interest of his clinical research, and he has really enjoyed the chance to work with great friends and colleagues within the Aplastic Anemia Working Party (one of the smallest Working Parties in EBMT, but scientifically extremely active).
He concludes: “EBMT has been part of my life and I have been part of EBMT all along! I am sure all our younger colleagues will take advantage of the great network EBMT has created over the years, and they will move forward the exciting field of cellular therapy.”
