If her patients sense an extra-empathy from the indefatigable Dr. Gregory, it is because her own family has been touched by lymphoma, which added fuel to one of her enduring life passions: finding a cure for blood cancers and training other doctors to do the same with vision, vigor and dedication.

 

There’s been a great deal of progress,” says Dr. Gregory, director of The Coleman Foundation Comprehensive Lymphoma Clinic, which recently opened as part of the Rush University Cancer Center.  “Many lymphomas have been turned into chronic diseases. We are able to manage them and generally give patients a high quality of life. However, some treatments that keep cancer cells at bay can cause serious side effects. The side effects can increase the risk of secondary cancers by suppressing the patient’s immune system or destroying normal bone marrow cells. We're trying to get away from a blanket approach where we're destroying normal cells along with the cancer cells."

 

An outstanding physician scientist and educator who remains warmly down to earth and accessible to her colleagues and patients, Dr. Gregory holds the Elodia Kehm Chair of Hematology and is Professor of Medicine at Rush University Medical Center/Rush University, Chicago, Illinois. She was the Director of the Section of Hematology at RUMC from 1994 until Jan 2012. 

 

Her research interests include Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas, leukemias and myelomas, especially using novel approaches of immunotherapy.  Dr. Gregory has been involved in several radioimmunotherapy trials in non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is presently involved in many clinical trials with small molecules targeted to malignant lymphoma and leukemia cells.  She has chaired or co-chaired several national and international symposia on hematologic malignancies. In September 2008, she was co-chair of the “American Society of Hematology State-of-the-Art Symposium.”  She is the senior author of the fourth

edition of the “American Society of Hematology Self-Assessment Program Book  (ASH-SAP).” She has authored or coauthored 418 manuscripts,  book chapters and abstracts.  Dr Gregory speaks extensively on hematologic malignancies both nationally and internationally.

 

Following her medical degree with honors from The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Gregory’s postgraduate training included an internship, residency and chief residency in internal medicine at Rush University Medical Center.  She then underwent three years of subspecialty training in hematology with a research grant from the Schweppe Foundation at Rush University Medical Center as well. She is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and holds subspecialty certification in hematology.

 

Dr. Gregory’s career has been directed toward patient care, teaching, research and administration. She was elected to the “Mark H. Lepper, M.D. Society of Teachers” at Rush Medical College in 1986.  She received an endowed chair as Director of Hematology at Rush in 1995.  She was elected the first woman president of the Chicago Society of Internal Medicine from 1994 to 1995.   She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the Northern Illinois Council of the College, and in 1996 received the “Illinois Laureate Award” from the College.  She was awarded the “1998 Alumnae Achievement Award” by the Medical College of Pennsylvania/Hahnemann Medical School.  She received the “Excellence in Medicine Award” from the Department of Medicine of Rush University Medical Center in 2006.  In 2008 Dr. Gregory was awarded the Lymphoma Research Foundation’s “Chicago HOPE Award.”  She was also recently elected to the prestigious Scientific Advisory Board of the Lymphoma Research Foundation

 

In 1992, Dr. Gregory did medical missionary work in Haiti and in 1994 was selected to go to Croatia as a member of the “United Nations Security Council Commission of Experts Investigating War Crimes and Sexual Assaults Against Women in the Former Yugoslavia.”