Massachusetts General Hospital

Transplantation Biology Research Center staff

The TBRC is a multi-disciplinary research group working at the interface between basic science and clinical applications in transplantation immunology. The center is a unit within the Department of Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). The TBRC works very closely with the Transplant Unit of the Department of Surgery and the Bone Marrow Transplantation Unit of the Department of Medicine. This close collaboration between basic science and clinical applications enhances the quality of the research in both areas. Researchers and clinicians benefit from available expertise in molecular biology, cellular immunology, infectious disease, surgery, medicine, pathology, nephrology, and cardiology.

History and Leadership of the TBRC

In the United States alone, more than 45,000 people a year are placed on waiting lists to receive suitable organs for life-saving transplants. Bone marrow transplantation has likewise become a means of curing hematologic malignancies and other blood-related diseases and is the only hope for thousands suffering from such illnesses. Furthering our understanding of transplantation biology is critical to developing new ways to prevent organ rejection, to finding alternative sources of organs and to providing bone marrow transplantation to patients without available matched sibling donors. The mission of the TBRC is to understand the basic immunologic mechanisms through which specific tolerance can be induced for organ and bone marrow transplant recipients, and to find creative new means of dealing with the shortage of available organs.

Contact Us

David H. Sachs, M.D.
Director, Transplantation Biology Research Center
MGH-East, Bldg. 149-9019, 13th Street
Boston, MA 02129-2020
Phone: 617-726-4065
Fax: 617-726-4067

In 1991 Dr. David H. Sachs returned to the Massachusetts General Hospital from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in order to establish the TBRC as a new research center in the Department of Surgery. Dr. Sachs had trained in surgery at the MGH from 1968-1970, and then had worked at the NIH for 21 years, where he became Chief of the Immunology Branch of the National Cancer Institute. He subsequently recruited a staff of outstanding scientists directing independent research programs in many phases of transplantation biology, from basic molecular research to large animal pre-clinical and clinical models of transplantation. Currently, the staff of the TBRC is approximately 50 persons, comprising five scientific groups. The emphasis is on collaboration and interaction between these groups of scientists and clinicians.

Dr. Joren C. Madsen returned to the TBRC as Co-Director in 2011. He trained as a surgical intern and resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1982 to 1990. In 1993, he joined the Division of Cardiac Surgery at MGH as Surgical Director of the Cardiac Transplantation program. At the same time, he joined the TBRC and directed the Cardiothoracic Transplantation Laboratory until 2006. In 2006, Dr. Madsen became the founding Director of the MGH Transplantation Center and between 2008 and 2011 assumed the role of Section Chief of Cardiac Surgery. His research interests include the transplantation tolerance, chronic rejection and innate immunity.