The ASH Journal Club is a monthly live virtual series that highlights seminal papers in hematology published in Blood, Blood Advances, Blood Neoplasia, and Blood Vessels, Thrombosis, & Hemostasis. Each session features a manuscript author and moderators from both basic and clinical research, providing a comprehensive understanding and engaging discussion on groundbreaking research.

This Journal Club will examine how modern machine-learning survival models can be used to inform clinically relevant decisions in unrelated donor selection for allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation. Using a large contemporary registry cohort, the featured study evaluates the impact of donor age, sex, and other characteristics on survival outcomes and discusses how interpretable AI approaches can complement established clinical donor-selection frameworks.

Date: February 24, 2026

Time: 10:00 - 11:00 am ET

Presenters: 
Stephen Spellman, MBS, CIBMTR (Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplantation), NMDP, Minneapolis, MN

Rodney Sparapani, PhD, Medical College of Wisconsin

Moderator 
Roni Shouval, MD, PhD, Precision Cellular Therapy Laboratory, Adult BMT Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY