[ FROM THE FIELD ]
PLAYING THE LONG GAME
IN LYMPHOMA RESEARCH “The long view is that you need to develop mechanisms to help patients.”
When you look around Dr. Melnick’s office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, you can’t help but notice a gigantic model replica of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. Dr. Melnick approaches research with the same patience and attention to detail that it seemingly took to put together that model, and with an equally innovative view of the future.
FROM DANCE TO HEMATOLOGY Born in Argentina, Dr. Melnick spent most of his adolescent and young adult life with a love of dance—even directing his own dance company. However, his true passion always lay in medicine and understanding the nature of disease. This passion led him to attend medical school in Argentina and later move to the United States for clinical training in internal medicine. “I had read in one of my pathology textbooks about a hospital in New York [Mount Sinai Hospital] where certain diseases were being discovered, and so I thought, ‘Wow, that must be the best place to go,’” says Dr. Melnick.
Playing the long game is not a new concept for Lymphoma Research Foundation Grantee and Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) member Ari Melnick, MD, of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine. Lymphoma research is not a field for those looking for instant gratification, but Dr. Melnick has never taken a sprinter’s approach to finding cures for lymphoma. He is more of a marathoner.
PULSE | WINTER EDITION 2020
“ I felt that hematology presented an opportunity to have a deeper understanding of medicine at the molecular level.”
