“This prestigious award recognizes Dr.Vo’s clinical excellence and the creative scholarship she brings to the field of transplantation,” said Andrew S. Klein MD, FACS, MBA, director of the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center. “This is a unique achievement that represents her dedication and tireless work on behalf of transplant patients.”
Vo received the award at the recent World Transplant Congress in San Francisco, where Cedars-Sinai kidney transplant clinicians and researchers contributed nearly 30 abstracts and presentations to the international gathering. One of the most highly anticipated presentations involved preliminary research of a new anti-rejection drug known as C1-INH by Stanley C. Jordan, MD, director of kidney transplantation and transplant immunology at Cedars Sinai. Patients in the small trial who received C1-INH after transplantation developed fewer complications.
Vo’s research in immunotherapy began in 1994 when she became the transplant pharmacist for Cedars-Sinai and joined a National Institutes of Health investigation headed by Jordan. Since then, Vo and Jordan have collaborated extensively, producing the 2004 landmark study that identified new anti-rejection treatments.
That study tested IVIG, intravenous immunoglobulin, as an effective therapy for lowering a patient’s level of HLA antibodies, which can cause a patient’s body to reject a transplanted organ. Patients who have been pregnant, been on kidney dialysis or received many blood transfusions often develop HLA antibodies, making it very hard for them to have a successful kidney transplant.
“Dr. Vo has played a key role in our research identifying how IVIG treatment significantly reduces the long amount of time a patient can remain on dialysis, suffering, waiting for a suitable transplant because their HLA antibody levels put them at a high risk of organ rejection,” said Jordan. “Her work has been an important asset to the entire field of organ transplantation.”