Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD,PhD
Professor, Medicine, Pathology
Research Program
Cancer-Focused Research
Red blood cell (RBC) transfusion is a powerful therapeutic tool and the most common form of transplantation in clinical practice, yet the immune system of the transfusion recipient can respond to these foreign RBCs and cause harm through antibody production. We have developed pre-clinical models of RBC transfusion to identify the early signals that trigger the immune system to respond to donor RBCs. Such an understanding is an important step towards developing targeted therapies to block this detrimental immune response, especially in patients who require repeated RBC transfusions such as those treated with chemotherapy, myelodysplastic syndrome or following bone marrow transplantation.