Judith Shizuru, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Shizuru is a Professor of Medicine (Blood and Marrow Transplantation) and Pediatrics (Stem Cell Transplantation) at Stanford. She is a member of the Stanford Blood and Marrow Transplantation (BMT) faculty, the Stanford Immunology Program, and the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. She has attended on the BMT clinical service since 1997. Dr. Shizuru’s research focuses on understanding the cellular and molecular basis of resistance to engraftment of transplanted allogeneic bone marrow cells and the way in which bone marrow grafts modify immune responses. This research complements her group’s interest in clinical bone marrow transplantation, and aspects of these studies are aimed at solving some of the major problems of bone marrow transplantation, which include graft-vs-host disease and bone marrow engraftment failure. Conventional bone marrow transplantation involves the transfer of heterogeneous populations of cells composed of rare hematopoietic stem cells and differentiated blood cell types. To study these issues, her lab’s approach has been to transplant phenotypically purified cells under defined conditions.