Q and A with Leukemia Expert Justin Watts
The Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center chief of the leukemia section was instrumental in organizing the upcoming 4th Biennial Leukemia Symposium.
In 2024, more than 500 new leukemia patients came to Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Nearly 100 leukemia patients were enrolled in interventional clinical trials.
Justin Watts, M.D., chief of the leukemia section in the Division of Hematology at Sylvester, associate professor of medicine and Pap Corps Endowed Professor in Leukemia, has forged giant leaps in leukemia care, including the first clinical trial of a groundbreaking IDH1 inhibitor, which is now on the market to treat acute myeloid leukemia.
Dr. Watts talks about Sylvester’s leukemia research and clinical trials in the following interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.
What is your role and research focus at Sylvester?
I’m the leader of our research program in leukemia, where we do a large number of early-phase clinical trials — over 20 active clinical trials at any one time for myeloid leukemias — which is supported and backed by strong translational and basic science in the lab.
What are your goals for finding less toxic, more effective leukemia treatments?
There are 10 leukemia faculty at Sylvester. Six of us are clinical investigators, designing and leading the clinical trials. Four are physician-scientists developing new drugs and combination therapies in the lab and studying their mechanism of action. We translate these findings into our patients with a portfolio of 25 active leukemia clinical trials that is both broad in scope and targeted to our unique catchment area here in South Florida.
We’re leading the field with many of these trials on how to combine or sequence targeted therapies, using novel precision medicine drugs in combination with backbones of different chemotherapies, including less toxic chemotherapies for older patients, and immunotherapy. All three are important for curing leukemia, and that’s what we’re trying to do: cure more patients.
We like to design our own trials with what we think is the best agenda is to help patients, finding areas of highest unmet need and tailoring treatment options based on ahead-of-the-curve scientific research.
Dr. Justin Watts
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the most common type of leukemia in adults and the most difficult-to-treat blood cancer, period. That’s the reason I went into leukemia. When I was a fellow, those patients did the worst. That was where I thought the biggest opportunity was to change the field. There was a huge gap between hope and reality. We’ve moved the needle drastically in the past 10 to 20 years, and that’s due to clinical trials and the development of targeted therapies.
You studied English as an undergraduate. What was your path to medicine?
My father is an academic neurologist, and I’m the oldest child in my family, so that dynamic kind of played out. I would go to the clinic and see him practice medicine. He was a very good doctor and scientist, and I learned a lot from him.
I always liked writing, poetry, the great novels and Shakespeare. I thought briefly that I would be a writer or English professor, but I always knew deep down that I would go into medicine.
I took one year off between college and medical school and worked in a hospital in London, which was a great experience. I went to Emory University for medical school, to California for residency and to New York for fellowship, where I met Dr. Stephen Nimer. I followed him down here for my first faculty job almost 11 years ago.
Tell me about the upcoming 4th Biennial Miami Leukemia Symposium that you’re organizing.
It’s the premier leukemia meeting in the country. It brings all the best speakers talking about the key advances in clinical trials, how to use these new therapies practically in the clinic, and the basic and translational science that’s going to lead to the next new drugs.
It’s focused on the acute leukemias, myelodysplastic syndrome and myeloproliferative neoplasms. It’s a relaxed but very erudite meeting with the best minds in the world who are leading these trials, including many of our own Sylvester physicians.
What do you enjoy outside of work?
I have four children who are all pretty young — 11, 8-year-old twins and 6 — so that keeps us busy. I used to be a runner, and I ran cross country and track in college, but I hurt my hip, so I started biking.
I biked in the Dolphins Cancer Challenge in February, a fundraising event for cancer research, to support the trials that we’ve been talking about. Many of Sylvester’s trials are designed by us as the investigators, not run through pharmaceutical companies. We like to design our own trials with what we think is the best agenda is to help patients, finding areas of highest unmet need and tailoring treatment options based on ahead-of-the-curve scientific research. It takes philanthropic support, so we’re very grateful.
Tags: Acute Myeloid Leukemia, cancer research, Dr. Justin Watts, Leukemia, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center