SOTA 11: Transplant Genomics and Biomarkers of Injury
Minnie Sarwal
Minnie Saral is Professor of Paediatrics and Immunology and Director of the Paediatric Kidney Transplant Program at Stanford University, California, USA. She graduated from Calcutta Medical College, India and Guy’s Hospital, London, UK, before completing the Diploma in Child Health at London and a doctorate in Molecular Genetics at Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK with Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner.
Professor Sarwal is a member of several national and international societies, and has served on many Committees for the American Transplant Congress, International Paediatric Transplant Association, the American Society of Nephrology and the National Institutes of Health and is a Councilor for the IPTA. A prolific speaker, Professor Sarwal has presented at numerous national and international meetings and chaired several sessions. Her career has been marked by a number of awards and distinctions, including the Order of Excellence in Scientific Research (Cambridge, UK, 2002) and the Dean’s Resident Teaching Award (2005) as well as the Junior Faculty Award from the CCIS (2003-6). In addition, she has been listed in Best Doctors in California and WHO’s WHO in Medicine. She was cited several times as a Key Opinion Leader in Organ Transplantation by the Transplantation Society (2007-2009) and is an elected Senator at Large for the Stanford Faculty Senate. In 2009 she was elected as a Fellow for the Royal College of Physicians, UK.Professor Sarwal has served as an Associate Editor of American Journal of Transplantation and has previously acted as peer reviewer for publications such as Lancet, Nature Medicine, NEJM, Transplantation and Kidney International. In addition she has also authored and co-authored more than 150 publications, including textbook chapters and papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
Professor Sarwal’s research interests are truly translational, and are centered on the immunological basis of graft dysfunction and acceptance, using genomic and proteomic approaches, as well as immunosuppression clinical trial designs. She directs her basic science lab (http://www.sarwal.stanford.edu) at Stanford University and has pioneered numerous multicentre clinical trials in this field, including the first NIH funded randomized trial on steroid avoidance and Genentech funded rituximab trial for acute rejection in pediatric renal transplantation.
Dan Salomon
Bio coming soon.
Phil Halloran
Dr. Halloran is a clinician-scientist and a world leader in organ transplantation research with clinical and basic science. He has investigated mechanisms of T cell mediated rejection as well as the effect of immunosuppressive drugs, and was the first to describe antibody mediated organ rejection, now the leading cause of late kidney transplant loss. His work in experimental mouse organ transplants on interferon-g and its role in graft outcomes explain major rejection mechanisms but also provides the basis of a new diagnostic system, now the basis of a US patent. He has been an investigator in the clinical trials of every new immunosuppressive agent. He played a major role in the development of the Banff consensus process, the world-wide diagnostic classification for organ transplant biopsies. He has developed the Alberta Transplant Applied Genomics Centre (ATAGC) into the world’s leading centre for molecular studies of organ transplants and organ diseases, based on biopsies. Dr Halloran is the founding editor-in-chief of the world’s leading transplantation journal, the American Journal of Transplantation, with the editorial office at the U of A until the autumn of 2010. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Roche Organ Transplant Research Foundation, a Swiss based charity that has distributed $65M in peer reviewed research funding to investigators around the world. His laboratory has trained many graduate students and fellows who hold university positions in Canada, the USA, Europe, and Australia. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.