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Megan Sykes, M.D.Associate Director, Transplantation Biology Research Center |
Dr. Sykes is head of the Bone Marrow Transplantation Section of the TBRC. Her research program aims to utilize hematopoietic cell transplantation as immunotherapy to achieve graft-versus-tumor effects while avoiding the common complication of such transplants, graft-versus-host disease. Her laboratory studies in this area have led to novel approaches that have been evaluated in clinical trials at MGH. Another major area of her research has been to utilize hematopoietic cell transplantation for the induction of transplantation tolerance, both to organs from the same species (allografts) and from other species (xenografts). Her laboratory has worked toward the development of clinically feasible, non-toxic methods of re-educating the T cell, B cell and NK cell components of the immune system to accept allografts and xenografts without requiring long-term immunosuppressive therapy. Her work has also extended into the area of xenogeneic thymic transplantation as an approach to tolerance induction and immune restoration in HIV infection, and into the induction of mixed chimerism as an approach to inducing tolerance to allogeneic islets while reversing the autoimmunity associated with Type 1 diabetes.
Dr. Sykes was born in Toronto, Canada in 1958. She earned her medical degree at the University of Toronto in 1982, then completed a residency in Internal Medicine in Montreal and Toronto. She is ABIM Board-certified in internal medicine. Dr. Sykes received research training in transplantation immunology at the NCI, NIH, where she also began her own research program before moving to the MGH in 1990. Dr. Sykes funds her laboratory program through NIH grants, and grants from philanthropic foundations. She has published over 330 scientific journal articles and book chapters, and teaches in several courses given to the Harvard Medical School Immunology graduate program and in the M.D. program.
Dr. Sykes is Vice President of The Transplantation Society and Immediate Past President of the International Xenotransplantation Association, serves on numerous panels and committees for national and international organizations in the fields of transplantation and immunology, and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Immunology, the American Journal of Transplantation, Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, Transplantation, Xenotransplantation and several others. She has recently accepted the role of Deputy Editor for the Journal of Immunology. She is a member of the Advisory Council to the National Institute of Allergy, Immunology and Infectious Diseases. She served on the Immunobiology Study Section of the National Institutues of Health from 1996-2000 and was a member of the Secretary's Special Advisory Panel on Xenotransplantation. She has served on Scientific Advisory Boards to several biotechnology companies and as a trustee of the Roche Organ Transplant Research Foundation. In 1991, Dr. Sykes was awarded an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Award, and in 1998 she received the Wyeth-Ayerst Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Transplant Physicians. In 2007, she received the Basic Science Established Investigator Award from the American Society of Transplantation.
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