When, soon after her arrival at Ohio State in 1997 as director of Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and deputy director of The James, she was informed of her advance billing as a relentless researcher and leader, she didn’t deny it.
“I am driven. I am a perfectionist,” she told an interviewer, “but I consider myself a pragmatic perfectionist. I want things to be as good as they can be, but I don’t wait until every ‘i’ is dotted and every ‘t’ is crossed before proceeding.”
And proceed she did, leading the cancer program to new heights in research-based patient care. Soon after her untimely death at age 77 in March 2020, the OSUCCC – James announced it will expand her legacy by establishing a center devoted to furthering her decades of groundbreaking research in hematologic malignancies — work that revolutionized treatment for patients with acute myeloid leukemia and acute lymphoblastic leukemia via a science-based, risk-stratified therapeutic approach.
The Clara D. Bloomfield Center for Leukemia Outcomes Research will continue the pursuit of studies in hematologic malignancies, including acute leukemias, myelodysplastic syndromes and clonal hematopoiesis. A Distinguished University Professor who most recently served as cancer scholar and senior adviser to the OSUCCC – James, Bloomfield was globally recognized for her many discoveries relating to those diseases. Her research led to her election to the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) in 2001. Until she died, she continued her research as ardently as ever.
“This new center will be a worthy tribute not only to Dr. Bloomfield’s achievements, but to all who were privileged to be mentored by her or to work with her during her years at Ohio State,” says OSUCCC director Raphael E. Pollock, MD, PhD, FACS. “She played an incalculable role in our shared vision of creating a cancer-free world.”
Bloomfield’s work over half a century — including 23 years at Ohio State — had worldwide impact, resulting in the incorporation of cytogenetic and molecular genetic findings in the diagnosis of acute leukemias for the first time in the 2001 World Health Organization classification. Such findings also were incorporated into patient management of hematologic malignancies, including the clinical practice guidelines of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
Earlier, Bloomfield was the first to suggest and demonstrate that adults with acute leukemia, including the elderly, could be cured with chemotherapy, and to demonstrate that biomarkers, including chromosomal abnormalities, constitute independent prognostic factors that can be used to predict outcomes and to select treatment in adults with acute leukemia or lymphoma — a forerunner to personalized or precision medicine.
In the early 1980s, Bloomfield was instrumental in establishing Central Karyotype Review for trials conducted by Cancer and Leukemia Group B, which not only ensured a high quality of data for clinical and translational studies but also became the model for other cooperative groups and contributed substantially to improving the quality of leukemia karyotyping in this country. She also first identified several now-classic chromosome changes with prognostic significance in leukemia and lymphoma, and she was considered by most to be the world’s authority on how chromosome changes, certain gene mutations and gene expression changes influence treatment and outcomes in adults with leukemia.
The new center dedicated to her lifework will build upon her prognostication research, with the goal to better classify and risk-stratify leukemia and associated diseases, including the identification of personalized treatments.
As Bloomfield and many other scientists at the OSUCCC – James were contributing over the years to advances in cancer research and care, she once described Ohio State as “an ideal academic climate for this type of exciting research. With results like these, we can all sense that we’re doing some good in the world.”