Suzanne T. Ildstad, United States

Director
Institute for Cellular Therapeutics
University of Louisville

Suzanne T. Ildstad, M.D. is the Director of the Institute for Cellular Therapeutics, the Jewish Hospital Distinguished Professor of Transplantation, Professor of Surgery at the University of Louisville and CEO of Regenerex, LLC, a biotechnology company formed to make the facilitating cell-based discovery widely available. Dr. Ildstad received her medical degree from the Mayo Medical School followed by a residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. She completed 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. 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 numerous 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 first woman to receive the Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumnus Award (2000). Dr. Ildstad was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1997. She has served on six IOM committees, including organ donation and multiple sclerosis and was the Chair of the IOM committee commissioned by NASA to evaluate clinical trials involving astronauts in space. In 2002 she formed Regenerex LLC, serving as the CEO. Her recent breakthrough in eliminating the need for chronic immunosuppressive agents in kidney transplant recipients has been referred to as “disruptive”. In 2013 Regenerex, LLC formed a partnership with Novartis to make the platform technology widely available.



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