A Witness to—and Architect of—45 Years of Progress
As University of Rochester Medicine marks its Centennial, the Department of Pathology also celebrates a century of evolution, discovery, and service. Few individuals embody that history as fully as Neil Blumberg, who joined the department in 1980 and has spent more than 45 years contributing to—and shaping—its modern era.
Although he recently stepped down from his longtime leadership position with Transfusion Medicine/Blood Bank, he remains director of the Stem Cell Processing Laboratory and is emphatically not retired. He continues to practice and remains engaged in the research and clinical questions that have defined his career.
Blumberg’s path into medicine began in what he refers to as the post-Sputnik boom, when training scientists and engineers held a new national urgency. After starting in a Ford Foundation-sponsored, six-year combined B.S./Ph.D. program at Cornell, he saw a poster advertising Yale’s emerging MD/PhD program.
“I wasn’t sure I had the makings of a pure scientist, or of a purely clinical physician,” he recalls. “I wanted something in the middle—and I thought maybe I could have both.” His training at Yale, through medical school, internship, and residency, ultimately led him toward pathology and hematology, fields that combined intimate patient interactions with complex laboratory work.
The department Blumberg joined in 1980 is barely recognizable compared with today.
“There was a time prior when there were maybe five to seven faculty in laboratory medicine/clinical pathology,” he says. “There wasn’t really a division of laboratory medicine. Anatomic Pathology dominated everything.” Only in the 1970s had pathology become a unified department, folding in hematology, microbiology, and other clinical labs under newly appointed laboratory medicine chief Dean Arvan, MD.
Change accelerated with the arrival of leaders like Steven Spitalnik, MD, who centralized all remaining clinical laboratories and grew the lab medicine faculty to around 20.
When Blumberg came on board, he became the first full-time Blood Bank Director—a role so all-consuming, he was on call every night he was in town. Scott Kirkley, MD, joined the faculty in 1990 and halved that call schedule to every other night for the next 17 years.
By the 1990s and early 2000s, the department’s research footprint had expanded. Collaborators such as Rick Phipps, PhD, helped secure major NIH funding, pushing the department into the ranks of the nation’s more scientifically productive pathology programs. Today, the department has grown to more than 70 faculty and 1,200 total employees, dramatically increasing capacity to serve providers, patients, and families across the region.
Blumberg’s own contributions have helped make University of Rochester Medicine a national leader in transfusion medicine. “We have one of the most innovative blood banks anywhere,” he says, noting that several practices pioneered or championed at Rochester have translated into measurable improvements in patient outcomes.
These include universal leukoreduction—the removal of white blood cells from blood products using filters—a practice adopted widely in Canada and the U.K. in the late 1990s but to this day is still not consistently implemented in the U.S. Studies from Blumberg’s group and others show leukoreduction reduces adverse effects such as fever, infection, and mortality, and lowers overall hospital costs by shortening hospital stays.
Another Rochester hallmark is avoiding ABO-mismatched transfusions whenever possible—an approach followed for two decades despite long-standing expert opinion that ABO mismatched platelet transfusions are effective and safe.
“Some think it doesn’t matter. It does,” Blumberg points out. “The data are unambiguous and supported by randomized clinical trials.” His team, co-led by Joanna Heal, MBBS, MRCP, also developed protocols for washing red cells and platelets for select patients, such as those with leukemia. Though labor-intensive, it dramatically improves transfusion reactions and improve survival.
“You can save lives by doing things a little differently. Others may rely upon tradition and expert opinion—but we have data.”
Across nearly five decades, what Blumberg cherishes most are close collaborations: Spitalnik and Phipps; his wife and research partner of 45 years, Joanna Heal; and longtime colleagues from AP, including P. Anthony (Tony) di Sant’Agnese, MD. “Tony was an extraordinary guy. Modest, humble – quiet but powerful.” Heal wrote the successful American Red Cross extramural research grants and performed, along with Blood Bank Chief Supervisor Deb Masel, much of the lab research. Majed Refaai, MD, made critical contributions to ABO research after arriving in 2007.
As the hospital and Pathology department celebrate a century of medicine, Blumberg’s career stands as a testament to its values: scientific rigor, patient-centered care, and the courage to challenge old assumptions. He remains, as ever, focused on the work ahead.