James Ferrara, MD, DSc
Program Chair
Ward-Coleman Chair in Cancer Medicine
Professor and Director
Hematologic Malignancies Translational Research Center
Tisch Cancer Institute
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, NY

Dr. James Ferrara is a physician-scientist whose clinical and research career has focused on the immunology of bone marrow transplantation (BMT), particularly its major complication graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD). Using trailblazing proteomic techniques, his team has identified and validated unexpected biomarkers for skin, gut and steroid-resistant GVHD. He has created exceptionally large and informative biorepositories and then mined them to meld these biomarkers into the first algorithm that predicts response to treatment and that can guide GVHD therapy. Dr. Ferrara’s pioneering mechanistic studies have illuminated unexpected interactions between the innate and adaptive immune systems and have led to both conceptual breakthroughs and the discovery of novel therapeutic targets. A superb clinician and world-class clinical investigator, his decades-long focus on GVHD has significant potential impact in making BMT safer and more effective for all patients. Dr. Ferrara graduated Cum laude from Georgetown Medical School and then completed his pediatric residency and fellowship at Boston’s Children’s and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. After 19 years at he went to the University of Michigan to direct the combined adult and pediatric BMT program. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mout Sinai recruited Dr. Ferrara in 2014 to become the Ward-Coleman professor of Cancer medicine and to direct the Center for Translational Resarch in Hematologic Malignancies

[su_divider]Motoko Koyama, MD, PhD
Senior Research Officer
Bone Marrow Transplantation Laboratory
QIMR, Berghofer Medical Research Institute
Brisbane, Australia

Motoko Koyama graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan in 2000, completed medical training in 2004 and then undertook her PhD studies in Dr Takanori Teshima’s lab at Okayama University. She moved to Australia in 2009 to join Prof Geoff Hill’s lab at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane. Her scientific career has focused on understanding the mechanisms of antigen presentation during graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Dr Koyama has shaped a number of paradigm changes in the transplant field, demonstrating that recipient dendritic cells (DC) are not required for the induction of acute GVHD and instead defining an important role for recipient non-hematopoietic antigen presenting cells (APC) in this process (Nature Medicine 2012). More recently she described how a subset of CD103+ donor DC in the colon define the severity of acute GVHD (J Exp Med 2015) and the importance of donor DC in maintaining regulatory T cell homeostasis to prevent chronic GVHD (Blood 2016). Her current work focuses on non-hematopoietic APC. Dr Koyama received the Research Australia award in 2012. She was awarded a Leukaemia Foundation of Australia Fellowship in 2013 and is currently funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia.

[su_divider]Ernst Holler, MD, PhD
Professor
Department of Hematology and Oncology
Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program
University of Regensburg
Regensburg, Germany

Professor Holler leads the allogeneic stem cell transplant unit and program in Regensburg. His scientific research team is headed by Prof.Dr.Marina Kreutz. Professor Holler’s expertise lies in the clinical role of cytokines, the use of cytokine antagonists in the control of graft versus host disease as well as graft-versus-leukemia. Another major topic of his clinical and preclinical research focuses on clinical and experimental aspects of endothelial and pulmonary complications as well as the interaction of innate immunity and the microbiome with GvHD and includes mouse models of GvHD. He previously worked for over 20 years in the Med Klinik III, Klinikum Grosshadern, University of Munich with Professor Hans Jochem Kolb. Professor Holler is an active member of the EBMT and CIBMTR. Prof Holler is involved in teaching activities at the level of the EBMT. Together with Prof Kolb he also collaborated on the ESH but also at the level of local graduate and postgraduate education. He is reviewer of major scientific journals in the field such as “Blood”, “BBMT”, “Bone Marrow Transplantation. He was Partner on the EUROBANK, TRANSEUROPE and TRANSNET project and will continue to exchange samples and clinical data. Professor Holler’s research is funded by several grants especially the ‘Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft’, the Deutsche Krebshilfe and the Wilhelm Sander Foundation. His group participates in a research group “ELITE” focusing on early changes in organ and stem cell transplantation supported by the DFG, and he is also partner in the newly established “Regensburg Center for Interventional Immunology” (RCI). [su_divider]