Congratulations to Dr Peter E. Newburger (Figure 1) who is the 2026 recipient of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Distinguished Carrer Award. The distinguished career award recipients are chosen with great care. Beyond their scientific and medical achievements, those chosen possess the rare defining characteristic of actually creating a culture change in our field. Since 1988, the Society has bestowed this honor annually “…to a senior physician who during his or her career has had a major impact on the subspecialty, through some combination of research, education, patient care and advocacy.” The list of recipients illustrates the impact of our discipline on patient care, medical education, clinical and laboratory research, and advocacy. And Peter rightly takes his place in this pantheon of distinguished scholars, teachers, clinicians, and leading voices for our profession. Dr Newburger has raised Pediatric Hematology from a pediatric discipline to an academic engine. His research is insightful, collaborative, and highly translational. His strong research and clinical background is manifest in his remarkable stewardship of our journal. Peter was born in New York City and grew up in suburban Scarsdale, New York. His high school years foretold his future career and family. He was an ardent Met fan and Yankee hater; only the latter survived his many subsequent years in Boston. He was news editor of the school newspaper and had his first laboratory research experiences in a summer NSF program at the Institute of Arctic Biology in Fairbanks and a laboratory technician job at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, where a mutual friend introduced him to his future wife, Jane Wimpfheimer (Newburger). Peter purports to have no memory of their introduction, but they met again at the first freshman mixer at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. Peter received his BA from Haverford College with high honors in chemistry and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. Although he majored in chemistry there, he felt he could make more meaningful contributions to biochemistry or medicine. He and Jane married just before starting together at Harvard Medical School, in an era of few women and hardly any married students at the school. He received his MD, cum laude with election to Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA). Peter had no intention of going into pediatrics until the experience of working with children “clicked” in a community hospital pediatrics rotation. He also gathered more research experience with nearly a year in Baruj Benacerraf's immunology laboratory. This was followed by an internship and residency at Boston Children's Hospital (nee Children's Hospital Medical Center). During his internship, he became interested in hematology while caring for patients undergoing then-experimental bone marrow transplants. He went to talk to the division chief, David Nathan, to find out more about the training program and, as often happened with David, not encumbered by anything like a match, he walked out signed up for the fellowship. He continued in Boston as a fellow in Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at the Children's Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer Institute (nee Sidney Farber Cancer Institute). Peter remained as an Instructor and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School for 2 years. He left the Children's Hospital to establish the first pediatric hematology/oncology division at the recently established University of Massachusetts Medical School. David Nathan told him it was a great opportunity; Sam Lux said it would be the death of his career. Fortunately, Sam was incorrect and between 1981 and 1990, he rose from Assistant Professor to his current position as Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology and then he was honored as the Ali and John Pierce Professor, named in memory of a young woman he had treated and her father, who died of a myocardial infarction while running a half-marathon to raise funds for Peter's laboratory. While setting up his independent laboratory, he also took direct care (no fellows!) of children with the entire spectrum of hem/onc disorders and was on call alternate weeks for 2 years before expanding the division to three and then four faculty members. His laboratory, which evolved in its focus from neutrophil biochemistry to molecular genetics and from chronic granulomatous disease to neutropenia, has been continuously funded by the NIH and/or DoD for almost 45 years. In that time span, he held over 30 grants, 13 of which were NIH sponsored grants as principal investigator or one of multiple PIs. By any measure, this is an extraordinary funding record. His work in the field of neutrophil biology and rare neutrophil disorders, quantitative and qualitative, has changed our approach to understanding and treating diseases characterized by qualitative and quantitative neutrophil defects. His impact has been global. During a career that has spanned over 50 years, Dr Newburger has been proven to be one of the most talented physician scientists in our field. Peter's laboratory science has always been informed by his work as a clinician and a clinical scientist, and his science has and is still informing advances in clinical care. Peter was the first to demonstrate with Harvey Cohen that granulocytes from a fetus with chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) did not produce superoxide, leading to the first intrauterine diagnosis of CGD 1. In 1986, he was a member of the team that cloned CYBB (cytochrome b-245, beta chain), mutated in CGD, with Stuart Orkin 2, and then with Orkin and Alan Ezekowitz, he described the regulation of CYBB by interferon-gamma 3 leading to a successful clinical trial 4. Peter has a portfolio of clinical research on severe congenital neutropenia, with David Dale and Larry Boxer using the Severe Chronic Neutropenia International Registry, which he now co-directs with Akiko Shimamura. One remarkable example demonstrated the variable phenotype in patients with a shared ELANE mutation and severe chronic neutropenia 5. Without a doubt Peter has paid forward his distinguished mentors as he has guided numerous postdoctoral trainees, graduate students, and undergraduates. Peter's distinguished career continues with the development of a mouse model of neutropenia and work toward realizing gene therapy for ELANE mutation-mediated neutropenia 6. He has amassed greater than 23,000 citations with an h-index of 68; an h-index close to 70 is outstanding. His i10index of 170; 170 publications with more than 10 citations speak loudly to the relevance of his work. Furthermore, he has served as a member of the NIH Hematology Study Section twice and has been an NIH ad hoc and special emphasis panel member on numerous occasions. Peter has the uncommon ability to address research and clinical questions with critical thought and clarity of expression. As a testament to this clarity, in 1980, his paper on chronic granulomatous disease was accepted in The Journal of Clinical Investigation 7 with no revisions. Peter is an acknowledged source of valuable insight for clinicians, particularly those in the field of bone marrow failure and neutrophil biology disorders. A testiment to his clinical acumen is his service to patient/family support groups as the chief medical advisor for the National Neutropenia Network and member of the Medical Advisory Board of the CGD Association of America. If this were the totality of Peter's career accomplishments, “it would have been enough.” However, there is more, much more. In 2000, ASPHO President George Buchanan recruited him to become chair of the society's publications committee at a time when ASPHO was renegotiating its sponsorship of the Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. Instead, together with Jeff Lipton and Beverly Lange (who succeeded George as president), they joined with SIOP to establish the new journal, Pediatric Blood and Cancer (PBC) and recruited Bob Arceci to be editor-in-chief. Peter became associate and then deputy editor of the journal. Upon Bob's sudden and heartbreaking death in a motorcycle accident in 2015, Peter was selected and still serves as the editor-in-hief of PBC. Under Dr Newburger's stewardship, PBC’s impact factor was 2.4 in 2024, placing it in the top 10% of hematology and oncology journals. Dr Newburger has positioned PBC as one of pediatrics’ most influential scientifically supported, clinically oriented journals. During his tenure, Peter raised the journal's level of scholarship and created a niche for pediatric hematology and oncology that provides valuable clinical and scientific research for children with cancer and blood disorders that the revered journal Blood cannot. Indeed, PBC transcends pediatrics adding its value to the world's general medical and scientific literature. Furthermore his superb management of PBC has raised awareness of the strength of ASPHO and SIOP. As well, Peter is a section editor of UpToDate and served in the past on the editorial boards of Blood, Current Opinions in Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatric Hematology Oncology, and others. To complete his triple threat bone fides (research, clinical care, and education), Peter has held numerous positions on the American Board of Pediatrics, Sub-Board of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, has served on numerous thesis committees, and has mentored numerous postdoctoral trainees and undergraduates. His CV is replete with educational activities outside of his medical school. Peter is an exemplar of the ASPHO Distinguished Career Award. Not only is he a visionary physician–scientist with a global impact who has changed paradigms of neutrophil biology, clinical diagnostics, and treatment, but also a dedicated mentor, advisor, and collaborator. His sustained funding and highly impactful publication record bear witness to the quality of his science. His leadership as editor-in-cPeterhief of PBC has been instrumental in dramatically elevating the quality of inquiry in pediatric hematology, oncology, and cellular therapy by embracing scientific rigor and clarity of expression. For his scholarship, leadership, and culture-changing influence, Dr Newburger rightly joins the impressive honorees who have preceded him in this award. Finally, in addition to all that has been described, Peter is generous of spirit and embodies the patience, optimism, and kindness to which we should all aspire. I can think of nobody more deserving of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology ASPHO Distinguished Career Award. The author declares no conflicts of interest. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.
Jeffrey M. Lipton (Wed,) studied this question.