John E. Wagner, MD
Senior Advisor
John E. Wagner, MD, contributes to grant conceptualization and writing in close collaboration with Dan Weisdorf.
Dr. Wagner is a Professor in the Medical School’s Department of Pediatrics, Division of Blood and Marrow Transplant & Cellular Therapy. He is also the Founding Director of the Institute of Cell, Gene and Immunotherapeutics at the University of Minnesota and Co-Director of the Center for Translational Medicine. Dr. Wagner holds two endowed chairs: the Children's Cancer Research Fund/Hageboeck Family Chair in Childhood Cancer Research and the University of Minnesota McKnight-Presidential Chair.
Dr. Wagner's research focuses on the development of novel cell therapies for treating various complications of blood and marrow transplantation. This includes the use of regulatory T cells for prevention of graft versus host disease, thymic progenitors for speeding immune recovery, and expansion of hematopoietic stem cells to eliminate the risk of graft failure and delayed hematopoietic recovery.
Dr. Wagner is best known for his pioneering work on the use of placental/cord blood as a source of stem cells for transplantation, a procedure that has since been performed in more than 50,000 patients worldwide.