CCTI Lands Three Nelson Family Transplant Innovation Awards

The CCTI is pleased to claim three of the seven recipients of this year’s Nelson Family Transplant Innovation Awards Program’s Faculty Development Awards. Established in 2020, the Nelson Awards support basic and translational research in transplantation. The program is designed to launch innovative investigations with significant potential to advance immune tolerance, organ availability, understanding of mechanisms of graft loss, and pediatric transplantation.
Proposal applications were submitted in May 2023 and reviewed by our scientific advisory panel in July 2023. This is the third year granting Nelson Faculty Development Awards, 
The CCTI 2023 awardees are:

• Jianing Fu, PhD, who will be investigating the functional profile, migration pattern and microenvironment of human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells residing in ectopic organ sites under physiological and inflammatory conditions.
• Pawel J. Muranski, MD, who will be developing the next generation virus-specific T cells for adoptive immunotherapy and prevention of viral infections in solid organ transplant recipients.
• Rebuma F. Fite, DVM, PhD, who will be conducting studies on how to improve human immune system mouse models for immune tolerance studies using lymphoid tissue inducer cells a pilot study of pig to monkey xenogeneic liver transplant.

The research funded by this year’s awards has the potential to answer some of the most pressing questions our clinicians and their patients face—from children to adults, across many organ areas. This wide scope is a credit to the Nelson family’s vision to create an awards program that advances emerging research and investigators across our field. Their generosity is already helping these investigations reach their potential, and we look forward to seeing where the science takes us next. Congratulations to all the 2023 award recipients!