Welcome to Our New Hem/Onc Faculty

We are very pleased to announce the appointment of four new faculty members to the Division of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Medicine.

Dr. Lakshminarayanan Nandagopal joined our faculty as an Assistant Professor on July 1, 2018. Dr. Nandagopal is well known to our program as he completed his Hematology and Oncology fellowship in our Division.

Dr. Nandagopal is originally from India, and attended medical school at the Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University. He subsequently completed an Internal Medicine residency at Wayne State University/Detroit Medical Center, Detroit, MI. He then was appointed chief resident in Quality and Patient Safety Internal Medicine, John D Dingell VA Medical Center and worked for a year as a Hospitalist in Oncology at the Karmanos Cancer Institute, Detroit, before joining the Hematology and Oncology fellowship program at UAB. Dr Nandagopal’s primary clinic interest is interested in genitourinary (GU) malignancies. His research interests are in developing clinical trials for GU malignancies, and development of correlative and prognostic biomarkers. 

Dr. Pankit Vachhani joined our faculty as an Assistant Professor on July 1, 2018. Dr. Vachhani comes to UAB from Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York.

Dr. Vachhani is originally from India and grew up in the Middle East and attended medical school at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, Doha, Qatar. He subsequently completed an Internal Medicine residency at the Virginia Commonwealth University Health Systems, Richmond, Virginia, and did his fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Institute. He was the Chief fellow. Dr Vachhani’s primary interest is in hematological malignancies, particularly acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN). His specific research interests include developmental therapeutics and clinical trials for high-risk, elderly and relapsed AML.

Dr. Kimo Bachiashvili joined as an Assistant Professor on August 1, 2018. Dr. Bachiashvili comes to UAB from the New York City Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York.

Dr. Bachiashvili is originally from the Republic of Georgia, and attended medical school at Tbilisi State Medical University, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.. He subsequently worked as a research fellow at SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York, completed an Internal Medicine residency at the Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Connecticut, and his fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, where he also held the position of chief fellow. Dr. Bachiashvili’s primary interest is in hematological malignancies, with a focus on translational bench-to-bedside research in myelodysplastic syndromes, in collaboration with laboratory scientists. 

 

Dr. Olumide Gbolahan joined our faculty as an Assistant Professor on August 1, 2018. Dr. Gbolahan comes to UAB from Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Dr. Gbolahan is originally from Nigeria, and attended medical school at University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He obtained a master’s degree in Cancer Immunology and Biotechnology, from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. He subsequently completed an Internal Medicine residency at the Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, and his fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at Indiana University, during which he participated in an Advanced Hematology/Oncology and Developmental Therapeutics Fellowship resulting from a collaboration between Indiana University and the Eli Lilly Company. Dr Gbolahan’s primary clinical interest is in gastrointestinal (GI) malignancies, and his research interests are in drug development for GI malignancies, and development of biomarkers for response.

New Colorectal Cancer Clinic Opens at TKC  

UAB faculty from surgery, radiation-oncology, and hematology-oncology have come together to create a one-stop shop for colorectal cancer care. The new multi-disciplinary colon cancer clinic opened February 28, 2018 at The Kirklin Clinic, just in time to celebrate Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Colorectal cancer affects people in all racial and ethnic groups and is most often found in people age 50 and older; but screening can have a huge impact. If everyone age 50 and older were screened regularly, 6 out of 10 deaths from colorectal cancer could be prevented. 

Read the whole story here:
UAB's Interdisciplinary Colorectal Cancer Clinic