Professor, Scientific Director
Center for Cellular Therapy
Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston

Hongjun Wang, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, the Scientific Director for the Center for Cellular Therapy, and the Associated Director for the SCTR Clinical and Translational Program at the Medical University of South Carolina. She is also a VA-funded researcher. Hongjun is the advisor for the American Diabetes Association Islet Biology, Development and Function Interest Program and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDA), and is a member of the Gastrointestinal Committee for International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy. Her team focuses on basic science and translational research using mesenchymal stem cells to treat diabetes, chronic pancreatitis and other diseases with or without islet transplantation.

Fadi Issa DPhil FRCS, Associate Professor and Consultant Burns and Plastic Surgeon, co-leads the Translational Research Immunology Group (TRIG), Oxford. Programmes of work at TRIG comprise basic science investigation of regulatory T cell biology, advanced biomarker studies of transplant recipients, and clinical cellular therapeutics. The latter includes the ONE Study consortium of regulatory cellular therapies, and the randomised controlled phase IIb TWO Study of autologous polyclonal Tregs in living donor renal transplantation. He is a Deputy Editor of Transplantation, a Steering Committee member of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies, and previous Chair of the Transplantation Society’s Basic and Translational Science Committee.

Senior Researcher and Group Leader
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm>
CTRMS Councilor

Roberto Gramignoli working as a Senior Researcher and Group Leader at Karolinska Institutet. He is specialized in Medical Genetics and has a PhD in Molecular and Translational Medicine. During his post-graduate studies at Univ. of Pittsburgh (PA-USA) he identified and proposed new solutions for roadblocks limiting clinical Hepatocyte Transplantation. Due to the paucity of human hepatocytes, he investigated alternative sources, such as iPS and placental stem cells. Working with his Mentor, Dr Strom, they became the first group to get approval for isolation and clinical infusion of human hepatocytes and amnion epithelial stem cells (AEC.

Assistant Professor, Division of Nephrology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York

Paolo Cravedi, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Nephrology in the Department of Medicine and the Director of the Translational Transplant Research Center (TTRC). Dr. Cravedi is a scientist physician with a strong interest in kidney transplantation and autoimmune glomerular diseases. His initial studies have contributed to defining the organ allocation system currently used in many countries around the world. Dr. Cravedi was involved in the design and implementation of the first mechanistic clinical studies testing the safety/efficacy profile of B cell depletion in subjects with membranous nephropathy or focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS).