As a young medical student in the 1960s, Irwin Bernstein, M.D., helped care for children on the cancer ward of a New York City hospital. In those years, leukemia was invariably a killer, and Dr. Bernstein and his colleagues could do little to make the ward's littlest patients better.

So much has changed over the past 40 years. Survival rates have improved dramatically, thanks to researchers like Dr. Bernstein, Head of Pediatric Oncology Research at the world-famous Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle, WA, and the 2002 recipient of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's prestigious Specialized Center of Research grant. He and his team are trying to develop less toxic and more effective immune-based therapies for treating advanced leukemia and lymphoma.

"We've made so much progress for these kids," said the amiable physician. "All of us in this field want to do what we can to help them."

Dr. Bernstein can't remember a time when he didn't want to become a doctor. As a child growing up in Brooklyn, NY, the young physician-to-be sometimes found old vials of medicine in the back of his four-story apartment building. Curious about the strange pills and liquids, he combined the different substances to make his own medications (which, thankfully, he never took).

Those first experiments eventually led to degrees from Connecticut's Trinity College, New York University Medical School and then to a career at Hutchinson in 1971.

In recent years, Dr. Bernstein has cut back on his clinical work to devote more time to researching immunotherapy, stem cells and other cutting-edge treatments that could prove more effective, and less toxic, than older chemo drugs. In the 1990s, he and his colleagues collaborated with the pharmaceutical company Wyeth to develop gemtuzumab ozogamicin (Mylotarg^®), a pioneering monoclonal antibody therapy approved for acute myelogenous leukemia.

One of his greatest professional thrills was learning that Mylotarg helped the step-daughter of one of his early medical mentors. "That was a great feeling," he said.

As befitting a man with wide-ranging scientific interests, Dr. Bernstein enjoys an active life outside of work. He is a self-professed opera fanatic who has season tickets to the Seattle Opera, and he cycles almost every weekend.