ASH honors professor of pediatrics for research in transplantation immunology
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Bruce Blazar, MD, will receive the E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize at this year’s ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition.
The award recognizes pioneering research achievements that represent a paradigm shift or significant discovery.
Blazar — chair in pediatric oncology at University of Minnesota Medical School — is being recognized for his contributions to the field of transplantation immunology and stem cell biology. The award also recognizes his research focused on strategies to reduce blood and bone marrow transplant complications, particularly graft-versus-host disease.
“Dr. Blazar’s early contributions to preventing acute GVHD included preclinical modeling of commonly used immunosuppressant drugs as well as CTLA4-Ig, a recombinant fusion protein that blocks the specific T cell immune response to host antigens,” an ASH press release stated.
“In more current chronic GVHD studies, he discovered that donor germinal center B cells that produce anti-host antibodies can work in concert with macrophages to cause chronic GVHD,” the release added “His lab’s paradigm-shifting research in preclinical chronic GVHD modeling contributed to each of the three FDA-approved chronic GVHD drugs.”
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