Burcin Ekser - United States

Burcin Ekser, MD, PhD, studied medicine in Turkey and Italy, and carried out xenotransplantation research at the University of Pittsburgh. He is an Associate Professor of Surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM), where he is an active multi-organ transplant surgeon and serves as the Director of the Transplant Immunology and Xenotransplantation Research Laboratories. Despite his busy clinical service, his laboratory is funded by NIH and other extramural agencies and is involved in genetic engineering, xenoimmunology, identification of new xeno-antigens, tissue engineering, and 3D-organ bioprints and organoids. He is an active member of all of the major transplant societies and has served as a member and/or chair of many of their committees. He has been a council member of the IXA for 4 years, representing North America. He has published >190 peer-reviewed scientific articles and holds several patents. He previously won several young investigator awards from many different societies and was the recipient of the 2022 Rising Star in Transplantation Surgery Award of the ASTS and the 2022 TTS International Transplantation Science Mentor Award. He would be honored to serve the IXA as its president and would devote his energy to expanding and enhancing its international activities.

Jay Fishman - United States

Jay A. Fishman, M.D., FACP, FAST, FIDSA is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Transplant Infectious Diseases Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Associate Director of the MGH Transplant Center. Dr. Fishman completed medical school at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, internal medicine training and Infectious Disease Fellowship at MGH, and Fellowships in Molecular Biology and Genetics at MGH and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fishman established the Transplant and Immunocompromised Host Program of the MGH, the first such training program worldwide which has trained many leaders in this field. He established Transplant Infectious Disease as an essential component of Transplant programs and developed the first curriculum for the field. His clinical expertise spans infectious diseases of solid organ and stem cell transplant recipients and other immunocompromised hosts. His studies defined the use of ganciclovir for cytomegalovirus infection in transplant recipients. His background in immunology, virology and molecular biology led to the cloning of surface antigens of human Pneumocystis, and to studies of porcine cytomegalovirus and porcine endogenous retrovirus (PERV) in xenotransplant models. He has defined approaches to managing infectious risk in xenotransplantation (see New England Journal of Medicine 2022; 387:2258-2267). He is Past-President of the American Society of Transplantation. He serves on the Board of the International Xenotransplantation Association and chairs the Infectious Disease Committee of IXA. He has received career achievement awards from AST and TTS.

Hidetaka Hara - China

Hidetaka Hara MD, PhD obtained his MD from Kawasaki Medical School, Okayama in 1995, and then completed a general surgery fellowship and PhD at the Department of Surgery at Hiroshima University, Japan in 2004. He joined the research group of Dr. Cooper at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, University of Pittsburgh in 2004. He was steadily promoted through the ranks of Research Instructor (in 2007) and Assistant Professor (in 2011). When Dr. Cooper relocated his laboratory to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dr. Hara joined him as an Assistant Professor of Surgery (in 2016) and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017. In 2021, Dr. Hara made the decision to dedicate himself full-time to developing xenotransplantation research in China (working at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Yunnan Agricultural University as a Professor). Dr. Hara performs experimental surgeries in large animal models, including pig-to-non-human-primate heart, kidney, liver, islet, and corneal transplants, as well as pig-to-pig spleen, kidney, heart, and islet transplants. Dr. Hara also has extensive experience with immune assays including immune monitoring of the recipient after xenotransplantation and in vitro assays. He has contributed to illuminating how genetic modifications in pigs can protect their organs from human immune responses.

Wei Wang - China

Professor Wei Wang, M.D., Ph.D. is the Director of The Hunan Province Center for Xenotransplantation. Professor Wei established the Institute for Cell Transplantation & Gene Therapy, Central-South University more than 20 years ago. His world-class research and clinical facilities led to the establishment of several exciting programs in both human clinical islet cell transplantation and xenotransplantation in China. From his world-class research, in 2013-2017 he initiated one of the first porcine xeno-islet clinical trials for patients suffering from Type 1 diabetes. He and his university established one of the first DPF pig facilities in China where he developed specialized DPF pigs for xenotransplantation. From this work, he proved the safety of the porcine xeno-islet in a clinical trial based on the principles of The Changsha Communiqué.

Professor Wei was pivotal in the establishment of “The Changsha Communiqué” he was the Chairman of the Local Organizing Committee of the 1st and 3rd WHO Global Consultation on Regulatory Requirements for Xenotransplantation Clinical Trials. He hosted the Changsha, 2008 and 2018 meetings, and provided significant contributions to the development and drafting of “The Changsha Communiqué” and “The 2018 Changsha Communiqué updates”.

He will work tirelessly as a councilor of the IXA to support world-class trials and standards in both research and any clinical endeavor.

Jan-Michael Abicht - Germany

Jan-Michael Abicht, MD specialized in anesthesiology. Since 2006 he is senior consultant at the department of Anesthesiology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Since 2007 he is a medical scientist with a 50/50 occupation in research and clinic. He was principal investigator of several successful research programs. Most important he is principal investigator of the German Research Foundation, TRR 127, “Biology of xenogeneic cell and organ transplantation - from bench to bedside”. In this position he - for the first time - achieved consistent success in life-supporting porcine cardiac xenotransplantation. Since 2022 is member of the coordination group “Clinical Cardiac Xenotransplantation” at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Robert Rieben - Switzerland

Robert Rieben, PhD, has been involved in xenotransplantation research since the early 1990’s. Having worked on ABO-incompatible allotransplantation he became interested in anti-Gal antibodies and was involved in the two first EU-projects on xenotransplantation, which focused on glycoimmunology. From 1995 to 1997 he worked in Leiden / NL with Mohamed Daha, where he began his research on endothelial cell activation and -protection, particularly linked to the complement and coagulation systems. He pioneered the concept of endothelial cell protection by re-establishing a functional glycocalyx. Robert Rieben currently leads the Swiss National Science Foundation project "Xeno2Cure – advanced engineering and testing of organ donor pigs", in which he collaborates with Eckhard Wolf and Joerg Seebach. He has a long-standing collaboration with the Munich xenotransplantation teams and strong links to the European and International complement community. He also spent a sabbatical in Melbourne with Peter Cowan in 2015.

Greg Korbutt - Canada

Gregory Korbutt, PhD, Professor of Surgery at the University of Alberta, has made substantial contributions to the field of islet transplantation and cellular therapy over the past 25 years. In 1996, Dr. Korbutt, was one of the first scientists to demonstrate that neonatal pig pancreas organs could provide remarkably high-quality, functional porcine islets of Langerhans. This approach vastly simplified the process of pig islet preparation, reducing cost, complexity and efficiency and has revolutionized the field. Dr. Korbutt, is also one of the original principal investigators that in 2000 developed the ‘Edmonton Protocol’ for clinical islet transplantation. Dr. Korbutt is the recipient of numerous national and international honours for scientific achievement including the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Mary Jane Kugel Award in 2009, the Meritorious Service Medal by the Governor General of Canada in 2005 and the Canadian Diabetes Association’s Young Scientist Award.

Raphael Meier - United States

Raphael P. H. Meier, M.D., Ph.D. is a liver, kidney, and pancreas transplant and hepatobiliary surgeon and researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. His research focuses on developing solid organ and cell xenotransplantation to cure end-stage organ diseases such as diabetes, renal insufficiency, and liver failure. Dr. Meier is working on improving the microenvironment of encapsulated xenogeneic islets using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). He also uses mesenchymal stem cell transplantation as a therapeutic modality to deliver anti-inflammatory cytokines in chronic liver diseases and for solid organ xenotransplantation.