Massachusetts General Hospital

Biography

Pathologist
Massachusetts General Hospital

Austin L. Vickery, Jr. Professor of Pathology
Harvard Medical School

Email: nlharris@partners.org

Dr. Harris is the Austin L. Vickery, Jr. Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. She is a member of the Hematopathology division at MGH and Editor of the Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital for the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Harris obtained her B.A. Degree in English from Stanford University and her M.D. from Stanford Medical School. She interned in Internal Medicine at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and trained in Pathology at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

After a research fellowship in Hematopathology at Massachusetts General Hospital, she joined the staff in 1980. She was Director of Hematopathology from 1980 to 2009, Director of Surgical Pathology from 1985 to1992, and Director of Anatomic Pathology from 1992 to 1998. She was Program Director for the Anatomic and Clinical Pathology Residency Program from 1996 to 2001, and for the Hematopathology Fellowship Program from 1980 to 2004. She became Editor of the Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital for the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002. She continues an active diagnostic and consultation practice in Hematopathology.

Research

Dr. Harris's research has focused on the relationship of lymphoid neoplasms to the normal immune system.  Her studies range from investigations of the biology and pathology of Hodgkin's lymphoma to the study of nodal and extranodal small B-cell lymphomas, including follicular, mantle cell and MALT lymphomas, to the study of large B-cell lymphomas in the mediastinum and in specific extranodal sites. Having learned hematopathology in an age of multiple classifications of lymphomas, Dr. Harris became particularly interested in establishing consensus in the classification of lymphoid neoplasms.

Working first with the International Lymphoma Study Group and then with the World Health Organization, Dr. Harris and colleagues formulated the Revised European American Classification of Lymphoid Neoplasms (REAL) and in 2001, published a new WHO Classification of lymphoid and myeloid neoplasms. This classification represents the first true international consensus on the classification of hematologic neoplasms, and established a paradigm for arriving at consensus among pathologists and clinicians on disease classification. An update was published in 2008.

In organizing and editing the Clinicopathologic Conferences at Massachusetts General Hospital, which are published as the Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Harris has taken on the responsibility for educating readers about the contributions of pathologists, both laboratory medicine and anatomic pathologists, to the diagnosis and management of disease.

PublicationsBibliography of Nancy Lee Harris via PubMed