Suzanne Ildstad MD

Suzanne T. Ildstad, M.D. is the Director of the Institute for Cellular Therapeutics, the Jewish Hospital Distinguished Professor of Transplantation, and Professor of Surgery at the University of Louisville. Dr. Ildstad received her medical degree from the Mayo Medical School followed by a residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. After completing a medical staff fellowship in transplantation immunology at the National Institutes of Health, where she, with Dr. David Sachs, established the model for mixed hematopoietic chimerism, and a pediatric surgery-transplant surgery fellowship in Cincinnati, Dr. Ildstad joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in 1988 in Transplantation Surgery. In 1996, Dr. Ildstad was recruited to Allegheny University of the Health Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she first established the Institute for Cellular Therapeutics (ICT). ICT is a multidisciplinary translational research program focused on the development of novel cell-based therapies for the treatment of diseases. In 1998, the Institute relocated to the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky to join the hand transplant initiative. Dr. Ildstad's research on mixed chimerism to induce tolerance to organ allografts and treat nonmalignant diseases such as sickle cell anemia and autoimmune disorders is currently being applied in numerous Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved translational clinical trials, including kidney tolerance, sickle cell disease, inherited metabolic disorders, and MS. She is actively involved in many professional associations, serves on a number of editorial boards for peer-reviewed journals, and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the only woman to receive the Mayo Clinic Alumnus Award Distinguished (2000). Dr. Ildstad was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) at the National Academy of Sciences in 1997 and serves as correspondent for the Committee on Human Rights. S