Dr. Donald Small is Director of the Division of Pediatric Oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and the Kyle Haydock Professor of Oncology. He holds joint appointments in Pediatrics and Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Human Genetics. He also directs the Johns Hopkins/National Cancer Institute Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Fellowship program.

Dr. Small's laboratory was the first to clone the human FLT3 gene that is the most frequently mutated gene in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and results in very poor chances of cure for these patients. The investigations of FLT3 led Dr. Small and his team to discover drugs able to inhibit the cancer-generating activity of this important gene. His laboratory showed that a new class of drugs known as tyrosine kinase inhibitors could kill FLT3-affected cells, thus developing one of the earliest molecularly targeted cancer therapies.