Salman Fazal, MD, has been named a 2026 Castle Connolly Top Doctor, marking his third consecutive year receiving this prestigious honor. Only 7 percent of the nation's licensed physicians are selected as Castle Connolly Top Doctors each year, based on peer nominations and a rigorous physician-led research process.
Dr. Fazal, a hematologist and stem cell transplant and cellular therapy expert, practices at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. With more than 16 years of experience, he specializes in treating complex malignant hematologic conditions, including myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), B- and T-cell lymphomas, and multiple myeloma, with a focus on high-risk, relapsed, and refractory disease.
His expertise includes advanced therapies such as hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, cellular therapies, bispecific antibodies, and targeted treatments. He leads the bispecific therapy program in Central Pennsylvania, offering patients options when conventional therapies fall short. Dr. Fazal also serves as Director of the Cell Transplantation Program in the Division of Hematology and Cellular Therapy at Allegheny Health Network, where he provides clinical, operational, and strategic leadership for allogeneic transplant and cellular therapy programs, including CAR-T and emerging immune effector therapies.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Fazal took over a transplant program with below-par survival rates and led its turnaround. He has performed nearly 200 allogeneic transplants, with program-level survival meeting expected benchmarks, and established a dedicated long-term follow-up clinic for transplant patients with access to graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) clinical trials. He also oversaw successful FACT accreditation inspections over nine years.
Dr. Fazal's commitment to patient care extends to accessibility, as his practice offers both in-person office appointments and virtual telemedicine video visits. He earned his medical degree from King Edward Medical College in Pakistan, completed his internal medicine residency at Rosalind Franklin University/Chicago Medical School and Griffin Hospital (a Yale School of Medicine affiliate), and finished his fellowship in hematology and oncology at Allegheny General Hospital, where he served as Chief Fellow. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Hematology, and Medical Oncology.
As a dedicated educator, Dr. Fazal was named Teaching Faculty of the Year (2018–2019) by the Hematology Oncology Fellowship at Allegheny Health Network. He has served as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Temple University and Drexel University and has been a principal investigator on numerous phase II and phase III clinical trials. His research on transplantation outcomes, graft-versus-host disease, and hematologic malignancies has been published in leading medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, Blood, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Dr. Fazal's recognition as a Castle Connolly Top Doctor underscores his contributions to advancing cancer care and his dedication to compassionate treatment. As he stated, 'Expertise matters, but compassion is what truly defines care.'
