On Feb. 14, the 2025 Tandem Meetings will recognize four individuals who have made significant or lifetime achievements to the wider field of transplant therapy.

• Fernando Duarte, PhD, CIBMTR Distinguished Service Award
• Sergio Giralt, MD, Mortimer M. Bortin Lecture
• Joseph H. Antin, MD, ASTCT Lifetime Achievement Award
• Robert Zeiser, MD, E. Donnall Thomas Lecture

Fernando Duarte, PhD: Realism and hope

Tandem Meetings Awards & Lectures: (CIBMTR) Distinguished Service Award | 5 p.m., Ballroom B

To describe his work, Duarte paraphrases Ariano Suassuna, a writer from his home region of northeast Brazil.

“We should be realistic but never lose hope,” said Duarte, Federal University of Ceara, Fortaleza, Brazil; president of the Brazilian Society of Cell Therapy and Bone Marrow Transplant (SBTMO); surgeon at Hospital Universitário Walter Cantídio; and editor-in-chief for the Journal of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (JBMTCT).

Duarte will receive the CIBMTR Distinguished Service Award for establishing his region’s first transplant center and preserving the hopes of hundreds of patients and their loved ones.

He notes that for his patients, access to a regional transplantation center in his city of Fortaleza can be the difference between life and death. Socio-economic conditions and infrastructure make it impossible for many to realistically relocate or regularly travel some 1,800 miles (nearly 3,000 kilometers) to neighboring centers.

“If they could not come to Fortaleza, they would die,” Duarte explained. “This has motivated me to face all the difficulties I have had to face.”

For Duarte, the award is “a surprise and great honor,” as well as a tribute to his uncle, a doctor who encouraged Duarte’s medical education, and to his two mentors, Dr. Helena Pitombeira of the Federal University of Ceara and Dr. Mary Flowers, professor emeritus at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center — both of whom taught him to prioritize research and patients.

The 2025 Tandem Meetings will be Dr. Duarte’s first trip to Hawaii, and he will be accompanied by his wife, a nephrologist, and his four children — two physicians and two medical students.

He said the gathering helps rekindle his belief to “never lose hope and never lose focus on the patient.”

Sergio Giralt, MD: Collaborate to advance

Tandem Meetings Awards & Lectures: (CIBMTR) Mortimer M. Bortin Lecture | 5:10 p.m., Ballroom B

When Giralt delivers the 2025 Mortimer M. Bortin Lecture, he will represent the field’s third generation of transplant physicians — a group he said has seen tremendous changes in clinical capabilities and outcomes while following core principles championed by Bortin as an early transplant physician.

“As was Dr. Bortin, I am a strong believer in team science and that by working together we can advance much quicker than by working in our own silos,” said Giralt, a bone marrow transplant specialist and cellular therapist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Giralt earned a medical degree at Universidad Central de Venezuela and then completed residency training in the United States, in Cincinnati. These educational experiences in the 1980s led him to hematological oncology.

“That was when I saw my first leukemic induction. You had somebody near death, and you were able to take them back to health. It was such a moving experience that I knew immediately that this is what I wanted to do the rest of my life,” Giralt recalled.

He continues his career as a clinical researcher, physician, and medical expert, particularly in the treatment of multiple myeloma. He is particularly proud of collaborative work that has sped the advancement of the field. For Giralt, this includes being one of the founding members of the Blood & Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMT CTN), starting the BMT CTN Myeloma Intergroup, serving as a past president of the ASTCT (2014-2015), and starting the International Conference on Relapse after Transplant and Cellular Therapy (HSCT²) and the International Conference on Toxicities of Transplantation and Cellular Therapies.

“The research and work we have done has increased access and improved outcomes,” Giralt said. “But we still have a long way to go.”

Joseph H. Antin, MD: Lives as spectacular testimonies

Tandem Meetings Awards & Lectures: (ASTCT) Lifetime Achievement Award | 5:40 p.m., Ballroom B

Antin’s acceptance of the ASTCT Lifetime Achievement Award represents a career that has witnessed and contributed to tremendous advances in transplantation therapy. He said the moment will also pay tribute to personal sacrifices familiar to many of his colleagues.

“It is extremely gratifying to have the recognition of my peers for the work I’ve done, the sleep I’ve lost, and all the baseball and lacrosse games in my family that I’ve missed,” said Antin, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, chief of stem cell transplantation emeritus at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

As a student in the 1980s, Antin encountered transplant therapy as an emerging field with prospects for radical improvements in patient outcomes. At the time, most oncology was palliative, but transplantation therapy offered the end goal of a cure.

“That aspect appealed to me, and it still does,” Antin said.

He now sees and hears from people he treated more than 30 years ago and describes this as “a spectacular testimony to how our field has improved the lives of our patients.”

Though early transplantation therapy offered hope, its initial years were unregulated and uncoordinated.

“Pretty much everybody was doing their own thing,” Antin recalled.

He worked to forge the community and its standards. He helped form the ASBMT, the predecessor of the ASTCT, and worked with Mary Horowitz, MD, MS, and others to develop the framework for the BMT CTN. As a member and president of ASTCT (2003-2004), he helped establish rigorous accreditation standards.

Antin said he and the community owe a tremendous debt to patients who underwent clinical trials.

“It is because of this that we have moved as far as we have,” he said.

Robert Zeiser, MD: New insights and timeless lessons

Tandem Meetings Awards & Lectures: (ASTCT) E. Donnall Thomas Lecture | 5:50 p.m., Ballroom B

Zeiser said being asked to deliver the E. Donnall Thomas Lecture at the 2025 Tandem Meetings means a lot to him because it is a tribute to a pioneer of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation whose groundbreaking bone marrow research overcame numerous hurdles.

Thomas remained true to his overall research goals while adapting his bone marrow clinical studies to setbacks — an approach that saved lives across the globe and provided timeless lessons about balancing persistence and flexibility, said Zeiser, full professor of medicine and director of the Division of Tumor Immunology at the Department of Hematology, Oncology, and Stem-Cell Transplantation at the Medical Center-University of Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany.

In his lecture, Zeiser will outline current research on immune mediated side effects, share examples of cancer immune escape, and advance a hypothesis of a close connection between oncogenic signaling and immune escape mechanisms. He said these insights suggest that “rather than giving one drug at a time and waiting until a patient fails, we should be thinking of immunotherapies that interfere with both oncogenic signaling and lack of immune occupation.”

Zeiser noted that he benefited tremendously from receiving a post-doc fellowship to Stanford University, where he worked in the lab of Robert Negrin, MD, with an international cohort of scientists and physicians. Zeiser urges the community to advocate for fellowships, global connections, and protected time for the next generation.

“Without protected time, you have much less opportunities to plan your projects, write grants, and write your publications. Protected time is essential for young professionals,” Zeiser said.

This and other sessions at the 2025 Tandem Meetings | Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT® and CIBMTR® will be available for on-demand viewing for registered attendees following the live presentation.