Two new cancer doctors with expertise in melanoma and bone cancer and stem cell transplantation have join Upstate Cancer Center
• Jade Homsi will serve as division chief of hematology and oncology and associate director of adult hematology-oncology at the Upstate Cancer Center as well as an associate professor of medicine.
• Zheng Zhou has been named the director of stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy program as well as an assistant professor of medicine.
“The addition of these new physicians to the Upstate Cancer Center strengthens and enhances our ability to treat cancers like melanoma and sarcoma and leukemia,” said Cancer Center Interim Director Thomas Vandermeer. “It also broadens our range of treatments, including stem cell transplantation and cellular therapies, while introducing cutting-edge options such as CAR T-cell therapy. Their addition to our cancer-fighting team speaks highly of our center’s reputation in bringing the best practitioners to Central New York.”
Before joining Upstate, Homsi was an associate professor of internal medicine and the clinical chief of the hematology and oncology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He was the leader of the melanoma and sarcoma disease-oriented team at University of Texas Southwestern’s Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor of cancer medicine at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the center affiliate in Arizona.
Homsi earned his medical degree in 1995 from Damascus University in Syria. He completed a clinical research fellowship in medical oncology-palliative medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in 2001, completed an internal medicine residency at Mercy Hospital in St Louis (2004) and a fellowship in hematology and oncology at the Moffitt Cancer Center/University of South Florida in Tampa (2007).
He is dedicated to patient-centered care using evidence-based medicine and novel therapies. Homsi specializes in treating patients with melanoma, advanced skin cancer and soft tissue and bone sarcomas. He is active in research related to melanoma and sarcoma with a focus on immunotherapy and early phase clinical trials. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 articles based on his research and won several awards for his work from the National Institute of Health and the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Zhou graduated from medical school at Shanghai Medical University in 1997 and received his internal medicine residency training at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He earned his PhD in 2005 from McGill University. He then completed a fellowship in hematology and medical oncology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 2014.
Before coming to Upstate, he served as assistant professor of medicine at Tufts School of Medicine and associate director of the stem cell transplant and cellular therapy program at Tufts Medical Center
in Boston.
His clinical and academic interests are in hematological cancers utilizing transplantation and cellular therapy approaches. He has served as a principal investigator on multiple clinical trials and has authored more than 20 peer-reviewed publications in such journals as Blood, Blood Advances, Journal of NCCN, Leukemia and Lymphoma. He is an active member of several national professional societies and an inspector for the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT).