Bruce Blazar, MD
Director and Contact PI
Dr. Bruce Blazar directs the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). He also directs the Center for Translational Medicine, an integrated component of CTSI, created to bring innovative, early phase therapies into the clinic.
Dr. Blazar is the recipient of two different NIH MERIT Awards (NHLBI; NIAID), the ASH Ernest Beutler Prize and Lectureship and the E. Donnell Thomas Lecture and Prize, and the Till and McCullough Lecture Award, Canadian Blood and Marrow Transplant Group and the Lifetime Achievement Award and Lecture for the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium, and American Association of Immunologists Distinguished Lecture. He is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, fellow of the Association of American Physicians, American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine). He is the author of more than 925 manuscripts on the immunobiology of bone marrow transplantation.
Dr. Blazar has a deep knowledge and dedication to clinical translational science (CTS) research. As a researcher, he has directed preclinical basic and translational immunology and stem cell research and early phase clinical studies for ~40 years, with particular emphasis in the blood and marrow transplantation immunobiology. These studies include the first testing of: 1) the drug rapamycin to prevent alloresponses following hematopoietic cell transplantation; 2) keratinocyte growth factor to prevent tissue injury and hematopoietic growth factors to stimulate hematopoietic recovery in rodents and humans after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation; and 3) rodent and human testing of T regulatory cells (Tregs) as an immune suppressive therapy to prevent alloresponses. The latter have resulted in four phase I trials that have infused ex vivo expanded allogeneic cord blood or adult peripheral blood Tregs; and 4) preclinical development of the only FDA approved GVHD prophylaxis (abatacept); 5) preclinical and clinical testing of new chronic graft-versus-host disease therapies that have served as foundational preclinical data supporting the only 4 FDA-approved drugs to treat this disease.