Marina Konopleva, MD, Phd, is Professor, Oncology, Professor, Molecular Pharmacology, Director, Leukemia Program and Co-Director, Blood Cancer Institute, at Montefiore Einstein. Her clinic focus centers on treating patients with hematologic malignancies, with an emphasis on acute myeloid and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She has additional expertise in treating patients with high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome and chronic myeloid leukemia.
After obtaining her Doctor of Medicine in 1990 from First Pavlov Medical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, Dr. Konopleva completed her postgraduate training in internal medicine at I.P. Pavlov State Medical Institute in 1993. In 1998 she obtained her PhD in experimental hematology from the Federal Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion as well as her postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Hematology with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Dr. Konopleva conducts laboratory research focusing on approaches activating cell death, metabolic inhibitors and immune-oncology in AML. Her key contributions include the identification of dependency of AML cells on the anti-apoptotic protein BCL-2 and the FDA approval of the BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax in combination with low-intensity chemotherapy in elderly patients unfit for standard chemotherapy. This therapy provides both low toxicity for elderly patients with AML and documented survival benefit. Dr. Konopleva’s ground-breaking research greatly benefited leukemia research, clinical research and the lives of patients. She is a scholar of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and her research is funded by the NIH, Department of Defense and various private foundations. Her work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and she has presented both nationally and internationally.
Dr. Konopleva is board certified by the Russian Board of Hematology, the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Internal Medicine - Hematology. She is a member of numerous professional societies including the American Society of Hematology, the American Association of Cancer Research, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Society of Hematologic Oncology.
Dr. Konopleva has won many awards for her work, such as the R. Lee Clark Prize - Basic/Translational Science and the Students' Faculty Choice Award from MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2019, the Otis W. and Pearl L. Walters Faculty Achievement Award in Clinical Research from MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2020 and the Mentor of the Year award from the Division of Cancer Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2022.