Guest Speakers

  • PROF ALEXANDER MORGAN CAPRON
    University Professor at the University of Southern California

    Alexander Morgan Capron holds the rank of University Professor at the University of Southern California where he teaches public health law, health policy, torts, and bioethics. He occupies the Scott H. Bice Chair in Healthcare Law, Policy and Ethics at the Gould School of Law, is a Professor of Law and Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine, and is Co-Director of the Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics. During 2009-10, he served as President of the Faculty at the University.

    Prof. Capron is the author or editor of ten books and more than 300 articles and chapters. An honors graduate of Swarthmore College and Yale Law School, he previously taught at Georgetown University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. From 2002 to 2006, he served as the first Director of Ethics, Trade, Human Rights and Health Law at the World Health Organization in Geneva. Prof. Capron is also an elected Member of the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Sciences) and of the American Law Institute, as well as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a former President of the International Association of Bioethics, and a Councilor of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group.

  • MS MARRY DE KLERK
    PhD
    Coordinator, Dutch Living Donor Kidney Exchange Program
    Dutch Transplant Foundation, Leiden
    Dept of Internal Medicine and Transplantation, Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam
    The Netherlands

    Marry de Klerk is employed by the Erasmus Medical Center and the Dutch Transplant Foundation as the national co-ordinator of the Dutch Living Donor Kidney Exchange Program.

    In 2002, she joined the department of Internal Medicine - Kidney Transplantation (Head Professor W. Weimar) of the Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam as a social worker and transplant co-ordinator for the living kidney donation program. She became involved in the preparation committee for a national kidney exchange program in 2003. She developed a protocol describing rules for registration, allocation, immunological, surgical and follow-up procedures. The Dutch Living Donor Kidney Exchange Program started in January 2004 and she became the national co-ordinator in co-operation with all eight kidney transplantation centers in the Netherlands and the National Reference Laboratory for Histocompatibility. Since 2004 she has published widely and given many presentations on the development and evaluation of the conditions, allocation rules, and computer matching and logistic of the program. Currently, she is pioneering ideas to expand the Dutch Living Donor Kidney Exchange Program with new alternatives such as: a Domino Paired Kidney Donation Program and an Altruistic Unbalanced Paired Kidney Exchange Program.

    Dr. de Klerk earned her bachelor's degree in social work and social service from the University of Professional Education, Faculty of Health and Social Studies, Rotterdam in 1997. After working at various departments at the hospital she received her doctorate from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences in April 2010.

  • PROFESSOR DAVID ERASMUS
    USA

    Professor Erasmus completed his medical school training at The University of Pretoria in 1992. Thereafter, completed training in Internal Medicine at St. Louis University, USA and Chief Residency, achieved the academic rank of Assistant Professor and underwent additional training at St. Louis University, completing a three year fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. David returned to South Africa where he worked in private practice at Unitas Hospital in Pretoria from 2002 - 2006 and served as Director of Infectious Disease Control. In 2006, he joined colleagues with whom he had worked in St Louis, and who had helped initiate the lung transplant program at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville. Currently he serves as consultant Medical Director of cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation and Medical Director of Respiratory services at the Mayo Clinic Florida campus. He fulfills a permanent post as one of three consultant pulmonologists dedicated solely to lung transplantation in the Transplant Department at Mayo Clinic, Florida. Currently the Mayo Lung Transplant Program in Jacksonville is the 9th busiest program in the USA and has amongst the best survival. He also has a special interest in interventional bronchoscopy.

  • DR JOHN FORSYTHE
    Transplant Unit, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
    Edinburgh, Scotland

    John Forsythe is a Consultant Transplant Surgeon at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, UK, a position he has held since 1995. Prior to this, he was a Consultant Surgeon with special interest in renal transplantation at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

    A prolific speaker, Mr Forsythe has presented at numerous national and international meetings and chaired more than twenty sessions. His career has been marked by a number of awards and distinctions, including the Moynihan Prize and Medal (Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, 1989), the Honeyman Gillespie Lecture (1998) and the Rutherford Morison Lecture 2010.

    Mr Forsythe holds many professional committee appointments, among them Clinical Lead for Organ Donation and Transplantation in Scotland, Chairman of the Scottish Transplant Group and Non-Executive Board member of NHS Blood and Transplant. He is also Chairman of the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs Advisory Committee to the UK Government. He is a Past President of the British Transplantation Society and General Secretary of the European Society for Organ Transplantation (ESOT) having served as Chair of the Education Committee of ESOT for a number of years.

  • DR WENDY J. GRANT
    MD
    Associate Professor/Transplant Surgeon
    Medical Director of Pediatric Transplantation
    University of Nebraska Medical Center

    Dr Grant's clinical interests focus on liver and intestinal transplantation, hepatobiliary surgery and intestinal rehabilitation. Her research focus is on outcomes following intestinal transplantation, liver transplantation and surgical education. She is the Clerkship Director and actively participates in medical student education.

    Recently published work includes: Florescu DF, Hill LA, McCartan MA, Grant W. Two cases of Norwalk virus enteritis following small bowel transplantation treated with oral human serum immunoglobulin. Pediatr Transplant. 2008 Jan: 19.

    Torres C, Sudan D, Vanderhoff J, Grant W, Botha J, Raynor S, Langnas A. Role of an Intestinal Rehabilitation Program in the Treatment of Advanced Intestinal Failure. Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr. 2007. Aug; 45 (2): 204-12.

    Grant W. Surgical complications of intestinal transplantation. Intestinal Failure: Diagnosis, Management and Transplantation, 1st Edition. Blackwell Publishing. In press.

    Grant W, Botha J. Surgical techniques for liver/small bowel and isolated bowel transplants. Curr Opin Organ Transplant, 2005. 10: 142-146.

  • PROF GUNTER ROLF KIRSTE
    Dr
    Germany

    Professor Gunter Kirste is the Medical Director of the Deutsche Stiftung Organtransplantation (DSO). He has a Certification in the fields of General Surgery, Traumatology, and Visceral surgery, and was previously Head of Transplant Surgery, University Hospital of Freiburg. He has been actively involved in kidney, liver and pancreas transplantation, as well as liver resection and shunt surgery. Prof Kirste has had numerous publications in the field of Transplant Surgery and Transplant Medicine, and has membership in numerous scientific societies. He was also a member of the Eurotransplant Foundation Board and is currently a permanent committee member of the German Medical Association on Organ Transplantation.





  • DR CAMILLE KOTTON
    MD
    Clinical Director, Transplant and Immunocompromised Host Infectious Diseases
    Massachusetts General Hospital, USA

    Camille Nelson Kotton is the Clinical Director of the Transplant Infectious Disease and Compromised Host Program, Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital and is faculty at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, MA. She graduated from the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago and trained in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA, followed by fellowship at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research interests include transplant infectious disease related issues, including travel medicine, the use of vaccines in the immunocompromised population, donor-derived infections, parasitic infections, and zoonoses. She is the current president of The Transplant Infectious Disease Section of The Transplantation Society.


  • PROFESSOR MIGNON MCCULLOCH
    MBBCh DCH MRCP DTM&H MRCPCH FCP(Paeds)
    UK

    Professor McCulloch currently holds the position of Consultant Paediatric Nephrologist, with specific focus on paediatric renal transplantation. She is based at Evelina Children's Hospital (Guy's & St. Thomas' NHS Trust), London and is actively following up approximately 100 renal transplant patients.

    Professor McCulloch is Paediatric Renal advisor to Kings College Hospital (London) for the Pediatric Liver and Small bowel transplant program as well as Honorary Associate Professor (UCT) working at Red Cross Children's Hospital twice a year.





  • PHILIPPE MOREL
    MD, PhD.
    Geneva, Switzerland

    After a surgical training in Geneva, Switzerland, I started my residency and fellowship at the University Hospital, Geneva in Switzerland. I then, in 1994, spent 12 months at the General Birmingham Hospital in UK, in the field of abdominal surgery and most specifically in the field of inflammatory bowel diseases. I then continued my training in Geneva and became assistant professor prior to continue my training in the US where I worked between 1988 and 1991, initially in Minneapolis and then in Pittsburgh in the field of pancreas, kidney, islets and liver transplantation. I then returned to Geneva where I started the pancreas and islets transplant program as well as the non heart beating donor program for kidneys and the living related liver transplant program.
    I was then appointed head of visceral and transplantation surgery in 1995, in Geneva: and became the chair of the department of surgery in 1996. Simultaneously I became full professor of surgery at the Faculty of Medicine.
    Largely involved in solid organ transplantation I started an islet isolation core facility that is one of the leading centre worldwide. I successively became medical director and then vice-president of Swisstransplant.
    I am actually the surgical director of the transplant network of West Switzerland including 2 university centres, Lausanne and Geneva. I am the president of 3 foundations, Fairtransplant, Fondation for New Surgical Technologies and Insuleman.
    I initiated and organized in 1996 the 1st European Day for Organ Donation and Transplantation and in 2005 the 1st World Day for Organ Donation and Transplantation. Both of those days have then be repeated yearly since then.
    Since 2005 I am mostly involved in new surgical technologies, working clinically with the robot Da Vinci, leading a clinical program for LESS and assuring a research program on cadavers for NOTES.
    We have organized several postgraduates training courses in robotic as well as in LESS surgery.
    I am the vice-president of the Swiss Surgical Society and author or co-author of over 450 papers published in peer review journals. My major interest nowadays is the development of new technologies clinically as well as in research.

  • LUC NOËL
    MD
    France

    Luc Noël, MD was born in Nancy France. He received his medical degree from the University of Grenoble and specialized in clinical biology, haematology and blood transfusion in Lyon and Paris. He is a French public hospital practitioner who was in charge of the Haematology and Transfusion Centre of Versailles hospital when he was recruited in 1992 to contribute to the establishment of the French Blood Agency following the tainted blood affair. As a consultant he contributed to the reorganization of the French Transfusion Service. He contributed to setting up the system of vigilance and surveillance of adverse reactions known as haemovigilance and to optimizing the clinical use of blood components.
    In 1999, Dr Noël was appointed by WHO as Coordinator Blood Transfusion Safety. In 2004 he was charged with a new unit, the Clinical Procedures (CPR) unit now in the Department of Health System Governance and Service Delivery in the cluster of Health Systems and Services, This unit is inter alia "in charge of promoting the appropriate effective and safe use of cell, tissue and organ transplantation, including surveillance of risks, in particular in xenotransplantation trials", following World Health Assembly Resolution WHA57-18. In 2010, after a global consultation process, the Assembly adopted Resolution WHA63.22 and endorsed updated WHO Guiding Principles for Human Cell Tissue and Organ Transplantation.

  • PROF MEGAN SYKES
    MD
    Professor of Medicine, and Prof of Microbiology and Immunology and Surgical Sciences
    Director, Columbia Centre for Translational Immunology, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
    Director of Research, Transplant Initiative, New York-Presbyterian Hosp
    Director Bone Marrow Transplantation Research, Division of Haematology/Oncology
    Michael J. Friedlander Professor of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology & Immunology and Surgical Sciences (in Surgery)
    Director, Columbia Center for Translational Immunology, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
    Director of Research, Transplant Initiative, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
    USA

    Prof Sykes joined Columbia University in April, 2010 after spending 19 years at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where she was the Harold and Ellen Danser Professor of Surgery and Professor of Medicine (Immunology) and Associate Director of the Transplantation Biology Research Center.

    Prof Sykes' research career, during which she has published 374 papers and book chapters, has been in the areas of hematopoietic cell transplantation, achievement of graft-versus-leukemia effects without GVHD, organ allograft tolerance induction and xenotransplantation. Prof Sykes has developed novel strategies for achieving graft-versus-tumor effects without graft-versus-host disease following hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). She developed an approach that has been evaluated in clinical trials of non-myeloablative haploidentical HCT whose safety and efficacy allowed trials of HCT for the induction of organ allograft tolerance, with the first intentional achievements of this outcome. Prof Sykes has dissected the tolerance mechanisms and pioneered minimal conditioning approaches for using HCT to achieve allograft and xenograft tolerance. Her work on xenogeneic thymic transplantation for tolerance induction has led, for the first time, to long-term kidney xenograft survival in non-human primates.

    Prof Sykes is Past President of the International Xenotransplantation Association and was Vice President of The Transplantation Society. She has received numerous honors and awards, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

  • PROF JOHN ODELL
    Professor of Surgery Mayo College of Medicine, Jacksonville, Florida
    Surgical Director of Lung Transplantation
    USA

    John Odell is a South African and is presently Professor of Surgery Mayo Medical School, Surgical Director Lung Transplant Program Mayo Clinic Florida.

    He was educated at Selborne College in East London and the University of Cape Town. Internships and postgraduate training in surgery and cardiothoracic surgery were in Durban and Edinburgh where he was exposed to the influence of Professor Ben Le Roux and Andrew Logan. He was recruited back to Cape Town by Bruno Reichart as a consultant in Cardiothoracic Surgery in 1986. The previous cardiac surgical consultants had all left after the retirement of Chris Barnard. Academic rank of Associate Professor was achieved and following the return of Bruno Reichart to Germany was appointed to The Chris Barnard Chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery, which he held from 1990 to 1993. While in Cape Town he was involved with research projects related to transplantation and was active in the Organ Donor Foundation - he was present at the inaugral meeting in Sea Point and later became chairman of this Foundation. He did the first heart transplant in a private hospital in South Africa (City Park Hospital, now Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital).

    Professor Odell's initial appointment at Mayo was as a Special Clinical Scholar in Rochester, Minnesota, where he spent 3 years. He then moved to the Jacksonville, Florida campus as Head of Cardiothoracic Surgery. Certificates of Need to do heart and lung transplant surgery were obtained and the programs initiated in 2001. Last year 28 heart transplant and 44 lung transplants were performed. The lung transplant program is now the 9th busiest in the country and has one of the best results.

    He has served on a number of journal editorial boards and is currently a Feature Editor for the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. He has had published 73 peer reviewed articles, 43 other articles, 34 published abstracts, 29 book chapters and edited two books. He has supervised 3 PhD theses.

  • NASRULLAH A. UNDRE
    Senior Director, Basic Science, Department of Medical Affairs, Astellas Pharma Europe
    London, UK

    Nasrullah Undre is based at Astellas Pharma Europe, London, UK, and has been involved in research and development (Clinical Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacology) with Astellas since 1992.

    Graduate studies at the University of Hertfordshire, UK followed by postgraduate studies at the Universities of Manchester and London.

    During his early career he joined Guy's Hospital in London, Department of Clinical Physiology, as research associate; his thesis was based on the study of the effects of anaesthetics on myocardial metabolism.

    He subsequently joined the pharmaceutical industry (GSK), as a principal scientist working extensively in the field of both pre-clinical and clinical pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism.

    For over three decades, he has been involved in the development of several medicinal products. Areas of research include immunosuppressive agents, topical immunomodulatory agents, NSAIDs, antihypertensive agents, anti-emetics, antidepressants and anti-infectives.

    During his career at Astellas, he has been responsible for the development of Tacrolimus containing formulations (Prograf, Advagraf and Modigraf) for prophylaxis of allograft rejection; Protopic for topical treatment of Atopic Dermatitis as well as Micafungin (an antifungal agent of echinocandin class).

    He is author or co-author of more than 100 publications in medical journals in the field of pharmacokinetics and pharmacology.

  • DR NICHOLAS WENDT
    Medical Director Distant Services Unit
    MeVis Medical Solutions
    Bremen
    Germany

    Dr Nicholas Wendt made his medical degree at University of Goettingen, Germany in 1997. Specialisation in General and Abdominal Surgery in Lueneburg and Rotenburg/Wuemme, Germany. Doctoral thesis on platelet function in cerebral ischemia in 1999 at University of Goettingen. Additional training in hospital management.

    Special interests: Liver surgery, medical imaging, IT in healthcare. Member of the German Surgical Society. Since 2007 Medical Director of the Distant Services Unit of MeVis Medical Solutions AG, Bremen, Germany, where he supervises a liver surgery planning service by three-dimensional reconstruction of cross-sectional images for visualization and volumetry of the liver anatomy. With the liver image and risk analysis provided for more than 5,000 cases, MeVis is a world leader in this field.

  • MS WILLIJ ZUIDEMA
    Social worker
    Staff Advisor Kidney Transplantation, Dept of Internal Medicine and kidney transplantation
    Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam
    Board member of Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects of Transplantation (ELPAT)
    The Netherlands

    Willij Zuidema is a social worker and presently works at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam the Netherlands since 1982.

    In 1999 she was appointed as co-ordinator of the living donor kidney transplantation program. She has been instrumental in the development of altruistic donation programs, e.g. kidney exchange -,domino paired-, and ABO incompatible programs. Her focus is the unspecified donation to unrelated recipients.
    She is board member of the ELPAT, the forum on Ethical Legal and Psychosocial Aspects of Transplantation.
    She co-authored several interesting publications and is member of various organisations, program and advisory committee's in the field of organ transplantation.

  • PETER VEITCH
    Peter Veitch is currently a consultant transplant surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital in London. He has occupied posts at the Royal Free and in Leicester as head of service for renal transplantation and urology. His main clinical and research interests have been in "reducing disincentives to living kidney donation through laparoscopic approaches to organ retrieval" and "expanding the organ donor pool by the use of controlled and uncontrolled non heart beating donors".
    He graduated with honours from Newcastle upon Tyne Medical School in 1972. During surgical training in 1978 he was appointed as a Welcome Fellow to pursue transplant related research. He gained his first consultant post in 1982.
    Following visits to Johns Hopkins he was the first surgeon in the UK to perform the operation of laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy. Subsequently he has mentored numerous other clinical fellows a well as consultants in the procedure.
    He is an honorary member of the South African Transplantation Society.