November 21, 2020

Deborah Stephens, MD

Deborah Stephens, DO joined the Division of Hematology and Hematologic Malignancies as an Assistant Professor in 2014. She completed her internal medicine residency at Cleveland Clinic and fellowship training at Ohio State University. Dr. Stephens’s clinic focuses on patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and lymphoma. Her primary research interests include developing new targeted therapies for patients with CLL and lymphoma, studying resistance to current therapies, and developing supportive therapies for complications of CLL. She is the Physician Leader of the Hematology Clinical Trials Division at Huntsman Cancer Institute and is the principal investigator on multiple clinical trials there. Her research has been widely published in influential journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Blood. She is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Clinical Oncology. On a national level, she is an expert panelist for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) CLL Guidelines Panel, which establishes and published the most widely referenced guidelines for the evaluation and treatment of patients with CLL. Dr. Stephens is the Physician Leader of the SWOG CLL Working Group Committee, which is a group of CLL experts from academic centers around the country who plan and implement national clinical trials to improve the standard-of-care for CLL patients across the country. Dr. Stephens is also a member of the medical board for the CLL Society, which is the largest patient-led CLL group in the country. The sum of Dr. Stephens’s experiences demonstrates her deep commitment to improving the care of patients with CLL and lymphoma.