Paulo A Fontes
Associate Professor, Department of Surgery, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine
University of Pittsburgh, USA
Dr. Paulo Fontes was the Director of the leading, world-renowned liver transplantation program of the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute (STI), University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) for almost a decade. It is one of the world’s leading liver transplantation programs, performing over 7,000 procedures during a 30-year period. Under Dr. Fontes’ supervision, the program has achieved its highest one-year patient survival rate of 88%. He is a recognized leading academic surgeon, researcher, and educator who has devoted his entire career to organ transplantation. As the Medical Director of the Organ Referral Center (ORC) at UPMC he supervised the center’s activities for more than seven years gaining a unique expertise in organ procurement and allocation, and additionally in the utilization of expanded criteria donors (ECD). In 2009, the ORC at UPMC was the country’s leading organ referral institution receiving over 9,000 organ donations from throughout the US Earlier, in 2007, it reached an all-time record 840 transplant procedures from an offering of over 5,000 possible donations.
Dr. Paulo pioneered the peri-operative infusion of donor bone marrow obtained from cadaveric vertebral bodies in recipients of liver, heart, pancreas, kidney, and islet transplantation. Cell transplantation, organ transplantation, and transplant immunology are his major interests.
