Dr. Rafael Bejar received his medical and PhD degrees in the Medical Scientist Training Program at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) prior to his medical internship at the University of Chicago. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston where he later served as a chief medical resident. Dr. Bejar then served as fellow in hematology and oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute where he later became an instructor and worked in laboratory of Dr. Benjamin Ebert on the genetic basis of MDS. He is currently a physician-scientist at the UC San Diego Health Moores Cancer Center in La Jolla, California, where his laboratory studies the molecular basis of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and related neoplasms.

Dr. Bejar serves on the molecular prognosis committee of the International Working Group for MDS and is a member of the NCCN Clinical Guidelines Committee for MDS. At UCSD, he has established an MDS Center of Excellence where he cares for patients, oversees clinical trials, and continues to study the molecular mechanisms that drive the development of MDS.

In collaboration with several groups, Dr. Bejar’s work has helped identify how genetic mutations contribute to the development of MDS and how testing for these abnormalities can help physicians care for their patients with this disease (New England Journal of Medicine, 2011). Most recently, he has published on mutations that predict response to treatment with hypomethylating agents (Blood, 2014) and outcomes after stem cell transplantation (Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2014). His laboratory is now focused on the role of somatic mutations in splicing factors and epigenetic regulators in MDS.