Roberto Gramignoli - Sweden

I would be honored and thrilled to serve as President-Elect of the Cell Transplant and Regenerative Medicine Society. Our Society has always been a global leader in preclinical and clinical aspects of regenerative medicine. During the last 16 years, as active CTRMS member, I supported our Society's growth in quality and services.

I intend to benefit from our previous leader's legacies and advance scientific research activities by promoting educational strategies and collaborative projects. If elected, my goal is to team up with the CTRMS Council and involve as many members as possible to support our Society's visibility. A position as President-Elect would provide me with an important opportunity to be ambassador and increase networking/professional collaborations. I will advocate for allied research partnerships between academia and the for-profit community. But primarily, I will encourage a solid, deeper involvement of the younger members in clinical and basic research, along with additional benefits for all members and supporters. CTRMS exists to lead innovative cellular approaches to patients, and my expertise in such a field would likely serve in the steadily growing excellence of our Society. It will be a great privilege to represent our Society and our transplant community’s interests.

Giuseppe Orlando - USA

Giuseppe Orlando, MD, PhD, Marie Curie Fellow, is an associate professor of surgery at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston Salem, North Carolina, in the US, and an abdominal organ transplant surgeon scientist specializing in the transplantation, bioengineering and regeneration of the kidney and endocrine pancreas. He received his MD, general surgery and PhD degrees from the University of Rome, and specialized in abdominal organ transplantation, transplant immunology, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering in Paris, Brussels, Oxford and Winston Salem. He is currently serving as counselor of both CTRMS and IPITA, as Chair of the Education Committees of both societies, and as Associate Editor for the topic of regenerative medicine for Transplantation. He serves as past-chair of the Regenerative Medicine Community of Practice of the American Society of Transplant (AST), and is currently chairing the AST-TERMIS-ISCT cosponsored webinar series that for the first time brings together experts from both fields of transplant and regenerative medicine. The overarching goal of his scholarly activity is to bridge transplantation to regenerative medicine, in order to join forces and build their mutual future together. For this work, he was the recipient of the 2017 Rising Star in Transplantation Award bestowed by the American Society of Transplant Surgeon and of the AST 2020 Basic Science Investigator Award. As of 4/2023, he as an h-index of 52, 9,100 citations, more than 300 manuscripts including book chapters, has edited five books on transplant and regenerative medicine for Elsevier-Academic Press, and is the editor in chief of a new book series on transplant and regenerative medicine published by Elsevier-Academic Press.

Paolo Cravedi - USA

Dr. Cravedi is a scientist physician with a strong interest in organ and cell transplantation. He is an Associate professor and the Director of the Translational Transplant Research Center (TTRC) at Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY.

He has been working on both clinical studies to minimize immunosuppression in organ transplant recipients and mechanistic projects to identify biomarkers of rejection and the immune effects of locally produced complement. Over the last 8 years, he has been working on the immune modulating effects of erythropoietin (EPO) and the tole of complement system in alloimmune response.

Wanxing Cui - USA

Dr. Wanxing Cui is a prominent biomedical researcher specializing in pancreatic islet transplantation, biomaterials, and tissue engineering. With a research career spanning over twenty-seven years, Dr. Cui has made significant contributions to the understanding of pancreatic islet transplantation, focusing on basic studies with rodent islets, preclinical research using non-human primate islets, and clinical trials with human islets. His multidisciplinary, translational approach has resulted in more than 60 high-impact, peer-reviewed publications. At present, Dr. Cui holds the position of Director at the Cell Therapy Manufacturing Facility at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. This facility, registered with the FDA and accredited by CAP, FACT, AABB, and CLIA, primarily supports the Human Pancreatic Islet Transplant Program, Blood and Marrow Collection Program, and Stem Cell Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy Program at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. As a dedicated professional, Dr. Cui contributes his expertise as a CAP inspector, FACT inspector, and AABB assessor to ensure high-quality and safety standards in cellular therapy. Outside his impressive research career, Dr. Cui enjoys golfing and dedicates time to improving his skills. Furthermore, Dr. Cui actively participates as a committee member in the AABB and ISCT cellular therapies sections.

Courtney Dumont - USA

Courtney Dumont, PhD is an early career investigator developing biomaterial approaches to improve cell transplant engraftment following spinal cord injury. In addition to cell transplantation and biomaterial development, Dr. Dumont has developed several nanomedicine platforms for improved drug delivery alone or in combination with cell transplantation efforts. Dr. Dumont is growing her cell transplantation program at the world-renown Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, which provides her with opportunities to grow her regenerative medicine program and collaborations with clinicians. She has pioneered biomaterials that create a conducive transplant site within the injured spinal cord for delayed transplantation of stem cells leading to improved engraftment and recovery in pre-clinical models. More recent efforts seek to further biomaterial applications to allow for timed release of stem cells at the injury site, thereby overcoming inflammatory and re-vascularization challenges that arise immediately after spinal cord injury. Her knowledge and expertise in neural regeneration, stem cell transplantation, and nanomedicine would continue to expand the areas of strength present within the existing CTRMS council.

Giuseppe Pettinato - USA

Dr. Pettinato studied Biology at the University of Catania in Italy and graduated in 2002 with a major in molecular biology. He completed his Ph.D. in Embryology in the prestigious joint European Scholarships program between the University of Catania and the Andalusian Molecular Biology and Regenerative Medicine Centre in Seville, where he developed a de novo pancreatic differentiation protocol using both hESCs and hiPSCs. In 2010 he was recruited and moved to the United States to join as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Bioengineering Lab at the Medical University of South Carolina/Clemson University. He later moved to the Virginia Commonwealth University, School of Biomedical Engineering.

During his postdoctoral work, he invented and developed novel techniques for the rapid formation of human embryoid bodies (hEBs) from hESCs and hiPSCs. This technology was applied to the generation of human liver organoids that were differentiated using an ad-hoc protocol that Dr. Pettinato developed and published in 2016. In the background of his novel research, Dr. Pettinato was recruited as an Instructor in 2015 to the Harvard Medical School where he now is running his lab developing liver disease models using multicellular liver organoids generated using this technology. He also collaborates with multiple research groups working on cancer research, generating multicellular cancer organoids for the study of the cancer microenvironment and therapeutic treatments.

During his Ph.D. studies, he was awarded a Research Award from the European Union. In 2015 he was awarded the Young Investigator Award by the TTS jointly with a Travel Grant Award. In 2019 was awarded the TTS-CTRMS Scientific Award; in 2021 he was conferred with the CTRMS Scientific Congress Award. He has had a long-standing membership since 2015 in CTRMS as a trainee and is an active Member of the CTRMS Young Investigator Committee.

Basak Uygun - USA

Basak Uygun’s research focuses on the application of engineering tools to help patients suffering from organ failure. Her work combines tissue engineering principles with regenerative medicine to develop technologies in the fields of organ reengineering, biopreservation, burns trauma and wound healing. Dr. Uygun received her BSc and MSc in chemical engineering from Bogazici University in Turkey and her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Wayne State University. She joined the Center for Engineering in Medicine and Surgery at MGH in 2006 and established her independent research program at the center. She was promoted to Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School in 2022. She is the recipient of multiple awards including NIH Pathway to Independence Award, Mass General Claflin Distinguished Award Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons among others. Her work is supported by grants from NIH, NSF and Shriners Children’s. Her publications appeared in Nature Medicine, Biomaterials, Tissue Engineering and have been cited close to 3500 times.

Ekaterina Berishvili - Switzerland

Dr. Berishvili is a trained surgeon with a PhD degree. Currently, she leads the Tissue Engineering and Organ Regeneration group at the University of Geneva and serves as the Head of the Cell Isolation and Transplantation Center at the University Hospitals of Geneva.

Her research focuses on developing advanced therapeutic medicinal products for curing type 1 diabetes by combining cell therapy and tissue bioengineering to create bio-artificial organs, specifically the endocrine pancreas. She has been awarded numerous competitive grants from European, US, and Swiss funding agencies.

Nationally, Dr. Berishvili serves as a member of the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study's scientific committee, the Geneva representative in the Swisstransplant working group for pancreas, islet, and small bowel transplantation (STAPS), and is a member of the Faculty Diabetes Center of UNIGE School of Medicine.

Dr. Berishvili is a councilor of the European Society of Transplantation (ESOT), a member of the JDRF Beta Cell Replacement Consortium, and has participated in several scientific program committees, including for the upcoming 2023 ESOT Congress. She serves as an associate editor of Transplant International.

William Earl Scott III - UK

Dr. Bill Scott is a Biomedical Engineer who has spent 19+ years identifying problems and solutions for the transplant community. He presently works at the Newcastle University Medical School in the Translational and Clinical Research Institute and serves as Scientific Director for the ‘Transplant Regenerative Medicine’ (TRM) group. Bill is a basic/translational researcher focusing on the intersection of cell therapy and solid organ transplantation. To facilitate translation of these findings into clinical practice, Bill has developed a particular focus on improved access to critical research tissues, working with regulatory bodies to adapt to emergent scientific developments, as well as understanding the commercial aspects of clinical translation.

Bill has many collaborators and presently serves as a board member for the ESOT Basic Science Committee where he is presently leading a webinar series and contributes to organising meetings and educational initiatives. Bill also serves as a member of the HESI Cell Therapy - TRAcking, Circulation, & Safety (CT-TRACS) Committee and supervises a student who cultivates their ‘Data Portal for Imaging Cell Therapies’ database. Bill is currently the Chief Scientific Officer for ScubaTx Ltd.; a spin out from Newcastle University focused on developing a medical device for enhanced organ preservation.