Mandy Ford, PhD

Dr. Ford, scientific director of the Emory Transplant Center, is a leading researcher of the cellular mechanisms of T cell responses in transplantation and immunosuppression. She is a vital member of the Emory research team currently spearheading new efforts to develop novel third-generation costimulation blockers as better and less toxic immunosuppression in clinical transplantation.

In addition to her NIH and private foundation grants as principal investigator, Dr. Ford is engaged in two R01-funded collaborative studies with Emory surgical critical care surgeon and sepsis scientist Dr. Craig Coopersmith.

I. Raul Badell, MD

Dr. Badell's training included a research fellowship in transplant immunology at the Emory Transplant Center, and an Emory-based abdominal organ transplantation fellowship, during which he further developed his research focus on basic immunology. In 2017, Dr. Badell received an NIH K08 award to study the mechanisms of DSA formation following kidney transplantation. The proposal for the grant obtained the highest possible score from the NIH study section, and Dr. Badell was honored with the Emory 1% Award, which recognizes investigators whose NIH grant proposals have received study section review scores in the top one percentile.

William Kitchens, MD, PhD

Dr. Kitchens received his PhD in transplant immunology at Emory. During his training years, he received three consecutive Young Investigator Awards from the American Transplant Congress, two Young Innovator Awards at Annual Scientific Exchange meetings of the American Society of Transplantation, and a Fellowship in Transplantation and a Roche Laboratories Scientist Scholarship from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.

Christian Larsen, MD, DPhil

Dr. Larsen has made seminal contributions to the investigation of the immunologic mechanisms of transplant rejection and immunologic tolerance, has been funded continuously by the NIH since 1996, and is an internationally recognized leader in kidney and pancreas transplantation. He and Dr. Tom Pearson played a pivotal role in developing costimulation blockers. One such drug is belatacept, considered a less toxic alternative to standard immunosuppressants. The FDA approved the drug in the form of Nulojix for kidney transplant recipients. Dr. Larsen is now testing belatacept in clinical trials for kidney transplant, liver transplant, and pancreatic islet transplant.

Denise Lo, MD

Dr. Lo did her post-doctoral research fellowship in transplant immunology at Emory. She specializes in adult and pediatric liver transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery, and is interested in translating advances in the understanding of transplant immunology to clinical application.

Aneesh Mehta, MD

Dr. Mehta is on the faculty of the Emory Department of Medicine and serves as assistant director of transplant infectious diseases at Emory University Hospital. His primary research aim is to develop predictive immunologic and virologic signatures of risk for viral diseases in patients receiving immunosuppressive agents, with the goal of developing treatment modalities to better protect and treat these vulnerable populations.

Kenneth Newell, MD, PhD

Dr. Newell is studying the mechanisms of organ rejection, is involved in efforts to further optimize belatacept, and is developing and validating immunological assays that can be used to guide and individualize immunosuppression in transplant recipients. The confirmation and endorsement of such assays could facilitate studies aimed at attaining transplantation tolerance.

Thomas Pearson, MD, DPhil

In 1996, Dr. Pearson, Dr. Larsen, and others published an article in Nature that provided evidence that blocking one of the immune signals required for organ rejection at the time of transplantation—a process known as costimulatory blockage—promoted long-term survival of organ allografts in rodents. This finding was rapidly translated to primates at the Emory National Primate Research Center and later to humans. These early studies laid the groundwork for belatacept, which Dr. Pearson continues to study in addition to other potential methods of transplant tolerance induction.