From trainee to faculty: For leukemia specialist and researcher, all roads lead back to MD Anderson

On a Saturday in late February, Hussein Abbas, M.D., Ph.D., celebrated becoming a U.S. citizen. It was nearly two decades in the making and the culmination of a journey that began when he fled a bombing in his hometown of Beirut to begin working toward his Ph.D. at MD Anderson in 2006. Along the way, he would complete multiple fellowships, return to Lebanon to pursue a medical degree, travel to Baltimore for residency, get married, welcome the births of his three daughters, become a full-time physician-scientist and establish a lab dedicated to better understanding how T cells can fight leukemia.

But no matter where the journey took him over the years, he kept returning to Houston and to MD Anderson. “I’ve always felt like I belong here,” Abbas says.

From the moment Abbas arrived in Houston, the United States’ fourth largest and most diverse city, he felt that he was at home. He was never the only one with an accent. He was never the only newcomer. And nearly everyone he met in the Texas Medical Center was here for a similar reason – to drive breakthroughs and make a positive impact for patients, no matter what they were facing.

Pursuing education in the U.S.

At age 20, Abbas was hoping to come to the U.S. to further his education, but because he lacked research experience, he knew it would be a long shot. He had completed his undergraduate degree in biology and had founded a nonprofit benefiting cancer patients. He applied to 17 programs and was rejected from all except one. Then, he received an additional message from MD Anderson. A spot had opened up, and they had re-reviewed Abbas’ application and saw potential in it.

He began to make plans to move to Houston. But that July, a war broke out between Lebanon and Israel. Abbas had yet to receive his visa, but he had his passport and some of his papers at his family’s home when he received a six-hour notice that bombing would begin in his neighborhood. He rushed back and ran up to his seventh-floor apartment to retrieve his papers. Days later, his family’s home was destroyed by bombs.   

Abbas stayed with friends in a mountain home nearby but away from the conflict. While there, he received a call from a visa coordinator, telling him to meet with a counselor in Syria to discuss his visa application. The path to Syria was also under attack, so he waited until night and traveled in the dark until he came to the house of a friend’s grandparents where he could stay. Unfortunately, the counselor denied Abbas’ visa request, but program managers at MD Anderson continued to work on processing his application. 

In August, now without a home and losing hope that his dreams to become a cancer researcher in the United States would pan out, Abbas returned to Beirut and found a job in a paint factory. Just days before his program at MD Anderson started, he got a call that his visa was ready. He picked it up at the U.S. embassy in Lebanon and caught the last flight to the U.S. before the program started.

Mentor’s influence shapes Abbas’ relationships in his lab

Education has always been an important part of Abbas’ life. Even though they hadn’t attended college themselves, Abbas’ parents encouraged him and his five siblings to focus on their education. Taking classes and working in the lab over the next few years was a dream come true for Abbas.

During this time, he learned that education wasn’t just about passing the test and getting the best grades, but about learning through experience – and mistakes. He had been fortunate to land a spot in the Lozano Lab. Run by Genetics chair Guillermina “Gigi” Lozano, Ph.D., the lab is renowned for its revolutionary studies of the p53, a gene that regulates cell division to prevent tumors growing. And Lozano herself had a reputation as a dedicated mentor. It didn’t take Abbas long to see why.

“I spent a year screwing up her experiments,” he says. “I was in the lab every night, but I was messing things up. So, after a while, I asked if she was going to fire me.”

Lozano laughed. She explained that education was a process. Even though he was making mistakes – and he wasn’t really making nearly as many as he felt he was – he was showing dedication with the hours he worked, and that was more important and worth rewarding, she said. The skill and accuracy would come later.

“That was a life-changing 2 minutes,” Abbas says. That experience drives how he builds relationships with his mentees in own lab today. Now, Abbas works as an assistant professor in Leukemia with a joint appointment in Genomic Medicine trying to teach the next generation the lessons he learned from his mentors like Lozano, Andy Futreal, Ph.D., Genomic Medicine chair and a world leader in cancer genetics, and Hagop Kantarjian, M.D., chair of Leukemia who is known for his contributions to clinical research and his dedication to improving the lives of patients.

After finishing his Ph.D. in 2010, he still had an urge to work with patients, so he returned to Lebanon, where he earned his medical degree while working as a part-time assistant professor and running a research group. He eventually returned to MD Anderson to complete a research fellowship in bioinformatics. He then spent a few years on the East Coast, completing a clinical residency before pursuing a clinical fellowship at MD Anderson.

Now a full-time faculty member here, Abbas sees patients on Fridays and rounds on inpatient leukemia service two months a year. The rest of the time he can be found leading a growing team of researchers.

“I believe in teamwork,” he says. “I believe that more minds thinking about the same thing are always better.”

His lab studies resistance to therapies and T cells, a type of white blood cell that develops in the bone marrow and plays a key part in the immune system, and how they can be reactivated to fight leukemia. But Abbas doesn’t focus his attention on when the cells do reactivate. Instead, he looks at when they don’t.

“I’m more interested in why things don’t work than why things actually work. That to me is more intriguing,” he says. “When you know why things aren’t working, then you can fix them.”

Finding balance

Abbas’ next big goal is to spend more time with his wife and three daughters, currently ages 6, 4 and 3.

“I’m really good friends with my girls,” he says. “I love being a girl dad, but I know they feel it when I’m not home enough, so I’m making it a point to spend more time with them.”

On Sunday afternoons he can be found painting nails, rehearsing ballet routines, fishing, working in the garden, hiking or planning the next family road trip.

“It isn’t easy, but it’s the best when I can get all my work done and spend my weekends with them and my wife,” he says. “I’m always looking for that balance now.”

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