Dr. van Besien has established a national and international reputation with several research and clinical interests. He has devoted considerable efforts at developing novel treatment strategies for patients with recurrent lymphoma, including the introduction of novel drugs and treatment in salvage therapy and in transplant conditioning regimens. He also has developed novel methods of transplantation for those patients who lack matching donors. Most recently his group has described a novel concept of haplo-cord transplantation with extremely encouraging results.

Dr. van Besien has over 210 publications in peer reviewed journals and his research continues to be supported by NIH. He is a member of the editorial review boards of the journals Bone Marrow Transplantation and Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. He is also Editor in Chief of the journal Leukemia and Lymphoma.