New Oncology Leader at Rutgers Cancer Institute and RWJBarnabas

New Brunswick, N.J., January 8, 2018 – Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and RWJBarnabas Health have named Andrew M. Evens, DO, MSc, FACP as a new oncology leader responsible for the delivery of integrated cancer care across both entities in servicing the region. Dr. Evens, whose clinical expertise is in hematologic malignancies, most recently was the director of the Cancer Center at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

As associate director for clinical services at Rutgers Cancer Institute, Evens will oversee and facilitate the integration of all multidisciplinary clinical programs across the Institute, including those focused on survivorship, palliative care and navigational support. He also will serve as the director of the Lymphoma Program in the Division of Blood Disorders at Rutgers Cancer Institute, where he will lead a translational lymphoma laboratory that utilizes systems biology analyses and investigates novel targeted therapeutic agents for lymphoma. As medical director of the oncology service line at RWJBarnabas Health, Evens will help build an integrated cancer care delivery platform that spans the health system. He also has an appointment as a professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

“Dr. Evens’ leadership skills and clinical expertise complement the mission of Rutgers Cancer Institute – the state’s only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center – in delivering the highest quality of cancer care. His role in enhancing integrated cancer care in concert with RWJBarnabas Health, will promote the growth of clinical research and clinical services that will enable us to further address the oncology needs of the state of New Jersey and beyond,” notes Rutgers Cancer Institute Director Steven K. Libutti, MD, FACS, who is also senior vice president of oncology services for RWJBarnabas Health and vice chancellor for cancer programs for Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences.

“I look forward to helping enhance the clinical mission of both Rutgers Cancer Institute and RWJBarnabas Health. By further emphasizing the strengths of our collective advanced clinical offerings and exploring innovative opportunities for improved and additional cancer care services, we will have a valuable impact on oncology outcomes for patients across the region,” shares Evens.

Evens is a physician scientist internationally known for his expertise in the biology, prognosis, and treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and Hodgkin lymphoma. Over the past 15 years, he has been the principal investigator for more than 75 cancer clinical trials focused on the treatment of lymphoma. Along with investigation of the biology of this disease, Evens also has a continuing research interest in lymphoma epidemiology and health outcomes. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Most recently, Evens was on faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine and Tufts Medical Center, where he also served as chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology and was a professor of medicine. He is a core member of the Hodgkin Lymphoma Working Group for the NIH/NCI Steering Committee and has been the principal investigator for several national clinical trials with the cooperative group ECOG-ACRIN, including those focused on high-risk follicular lymphoma (E2408, NCT01216683) and newly diagnosed Hodgkin lymphoma (S0816, NCT00822120). Evens is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Lymphoma Research Foundation (LRF) and is also involved in a number of collaborations and educational events with colleagues throughout the nation and internationally.

Having graduated with honors from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine at Midwestern University, Evens completed an internal medicine residency at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois and served an additional year as chief medical resident. He subsequently completed a hematology/oncology fellowship at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. He has published more than 100 manuscripts in a number of peer-reviewed journals and currently sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Oncology and is an associate editor for the British Journal of Haematology.

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