Dr. Torsten Haferlach is expert in the field of leukemia diagnostics; engaging in research, the development of new diagnostic tools as well as the link to treatment options. He has always been pushing its boundaries of his chosen field, now also introducing WGS and WTS and AI in routine workflows of leukemia diagnostics.
With an MD in medicine as well as a PhD in Germanistics, and a habilitation that already sets standards in the leukemia diagnostic field, he spent the first part of his career as a medical doctor and hematologist, first at the university clinics in Kiel and Göttingen, then at the university clinic in Munich where he acted as both the senior physician at the Department of Internal Medicine and the Head of the respective laboratory for leukaemia diagnostics.
In 2005 he set up the Munich Leukemia Laboratory (www.mll.com) together with three colleagues from complementary disciplines. Today the lab processes with a team of 250 employees over 105,000 blood or bone marrow samples per year, his practice treats more than 4,500 patients, and he is one of the major contributors to knowledge in this area: well over 660 articles have been published in top ranking, peer-reviewed medical journals since the lab’s inception.
Prof. Haferlach himself has authored and co-authored more than 635 articles over the course of his career. He is constantly contributing to the evaluation and dissemination of scientific knowledge in his chosen field: as reviewer of leading journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Blood, Leukemia, Haematologica and The Lancet Haematology, as member of editorial boards for journals such as Leukemia, Annals of Hematology, as sought-after speaker on medical conferences around the world, and by serving on the advisory boards of companies such as Illumina and AWS.