Dr. Polina Stepensky drew rounds of applause from a standing-room-only audience as she described her lifesaving innovation for helping to cure the deadly blood cancer multiple myeloma during the lead panel of The Jerusalem Post’s Women Leaders Summit in Tel Aviv on February 22. WATCH Dr. Stepensky's panel here.
Dr. Stepensky heads the Hadassah Medical Organization's (HMO) Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Immunotherapy for Adults and Children. She has adapted CAR T-cell therapy, a method of using immune cells to fight cancer, to make it available and affordable to potentially save the more than 160,000 patients diagnosed worldwide each year. Clinical trials show a 90 percent positive response for Israeli patients for whom traditional treatments have not stopped the disease.
During the panel, Dr. Stepensky spoke of her decision to work at HMO, where she could conduct the research that her patients from all ethnic groups need and put it into use. Working there, she said, is an "amazing experience.” She was inspired by Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold, who urged, "Dream big dreams and take practical steps to make them a reality." She added, "I'm always asking, 'What is the next step?'"
Dr. Stepensky’s personal journey took her from Ukraine to Israel, where she overcame detractors telling her she'd never become a doctor because "only geniuses” can be doctors. "You have to try to do your best when you go after your personal dream, and what will be will be,” she said.
The Women Leaders Summit, which featured stellar women leaders in Israel from all fields, attracted guests from Israel and abroad and was streamed live around the world. It was hosted by Maayan Hoffman, The Jerusalem Post’s deputy CEO, Strategy & Innovation and host of the Hadassah On Call podcast. In her opening remarks, Hoffman characterized the women as “powerful people who are changing the world, each in their own way — and they just happen to be of the female gender.”
In addition to Dr. Stepensky, the panel featured Dr. Yael Marantz, vice president of Nonclinical Development at Teva Pharmaceuticals; Prof. Ephrat Levy-Lahad, director of the Medical Genetics Institute at Shaare Zedek Medical Center; and Prof. Michal Schwartz, a neuroimmunologist at the Department of Brain Sciences of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Watch and read: The video of Dr. Stepensky’s panel is featured in this Jerusalem Post article.
Watch: The video of the Women Leaders Summit in its entirety is featured here.