Each year, the Section of Abdominal Transplantation at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis presents a lectureship honoring two pioneers of transplantation: Charles B. Anderson, MD, and William T. Newton, MD.
This Feb., the 12th Annual Anderson-Newton Lectureship in Transplantation drew a packed crowd to the Connor Auditorium in the Farrell Learning & Teaching Center. William C. Chapman, MD, the Chief of the Abdominal Transplant Section, welcomed the audience and shared a brief history of the two iconic surgeons. William Newton performed the first kidney transplant in the St. Louis area at what was then Barnes Hospital in 1963, and went on to train a new generation of surgeons, including Anderson. Charles Anderson—a pioneer of donor-specific transfusions—founded the Kidney Transplant Program at Barnes Hospital in 1973.
In the context of these two great transplant surgeons, Chapman introduced the guest lecturer, Shaf Keshavjee, MD, MS, Surgeon-in-Chief of the Sprott Department of Surgery at University Health Network in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Keshavjee presented a lecture titled “Re-defining the Future in Transplantation.” Keshavjee is the director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program, where the research shared in his lecture was conducted. The program is finding innovative ways to treat pneumonia in donor lungs—making otherwise unviable organs potentially usable for transplantation. Keshavjee also shared research on preserving donor organs for longer durations before transplant procedures. This research takes place at University of Toronto, where Keshavjee helped develop an Organ Repair Center. The innovations Keshavjee presented offer a future with more organs available for patients who need them, and improved surgical transplant outcomes for those patients. Following his lecture, Keshavjee answered audience questions about his vision of the future of transplantation. The audience engagement in this Q&A reflected the purpose of the Anderson-Newton Lectureship: “further the knowledge of fellows and residents, who learn about the latest innovations and issues in transplant surgery.”
The event concluded with a reception, where faculty, residents and international visitors discussed transplant surgery over lunch in the Hearth. This event was sponsored by Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation & Washington University Section of Abdominal Transplantation.
Below is a list of past lecturers in the annual series:
- Thomas E. Starzl, MD, 2004
- Sir Roy Calne, 2005
- David E.R. Sutherland, MD, PhD, 2010
- Eduardo de Samtibanes, MD, PhD, 2011
- Ronald W. Busuttil, MD, PhD, 2012
- Paul D. Greig, MD, 2013
- Allan D. Kirk, MD, PhD, 2015
- Carlos O. Esquivel, MD, PhD, 2016
- Lloyd E. Ratner, MD, MPH, 2017
- Peter J. Friend, MD, 2018