A giant in BMT survivorship
Small in stature but giant in her impact, Dr. Mary Flowers, longtime medical director of the Long-Term Follow-Up program, a comprehensive survivorship program for blood and marrow transplant (BMT) recipients, is retiring from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
‘She was doing research in this field way before others became interested. She was a pioneer.’
-Dr. Stephanie Lee
Flowers, a native of Natal, Brazil, credits the pioneers of Fred Hutch’s BMT program, including Nobel Prize recipient Dr. E. Donnall Thomas, for training and equipping her to establish a national clinical and research BMT program in Rio de Janeiro.
At the time, the country’s socialized medicine system required Brazilians to request that their government pay for them to travel to the U.S. for a transplant.
In 1987, six years after Flowers’ three-month stint at Fred Hutch with Thomas, she immigrated to Seattle with her husband, David Flowers, who had been hired as a research lab technician. Flowers did not have a job, but one day, she recalled, Thomas called her at home, where she was caring for her 1-year-old daughter. He asked her to come help on the BMT ward because a fellow was out sick.
That marked the beginning of a stint as a visiting physician, followed by a one-year fellowship during which she worked in Dr. Rainer Storb’s lab.
Eventually, she was hired as a staff physician and ultimately became director of the Long-Term Follow-Up (LTFU) clinical program, whose comprehensive care for transplant survivors became a model for other institutions including MD Anderson and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, as well as centers from South America, Europe and Asia, which sent their doctors to visit, observe and train with her.
-Written by Bonnie Rochman/Fred Hutch News