Nancy Lee Harris, MD, is a member and past director of Hematopathology at Mass General, where she maintains an active diagnostic and consultation practice. She is the Austin L. Vickery, Jr. Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Harris is also the editor of the Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital that are published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Harris’ research has focused on the relationship of lymphoid neoplasms to the normal immune system. Having learned hematopathology when lymphomas were subject to multiple classifications, Dr. Harris became interested in establishing consensus on the classification of lymphoid neoplasms.
Working first with the International Lymphoma Study Group and then with the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Harris and her colleagues formulated the Revised European American Classification of Lymphoid Neoplasms and in 2001, published a new WHO classification of lymphoid and myeloid neoplasms. This classification, updated in 2008, represents the first true international consensus on the classification of hematologic neoplasms.
The leadership and insight of Dr. Harris has benefited countless cancer patients worldwide, since only by classifying hematologic neoplasms into distinct clinicopathologic entities can they be reliably diagnosed, treated and studied.
