NSF ATP-Bio Public Webinar Series
Presents:
Dr. Robert Montgomery
MD, DPhil, FACS
H. Leon Pachter Chair and Professor of Surgery
Director, NYU Langone Transplant Institute
The decedent model: A new paradigm for accelerate need lifesaving biomedical innovation and de-risking high stakes clinical trials
Dr. Robert A. Montgomery is Chair of Surgery and Director of the Transplant Institute at NYU Langone Health. A pioneer in transplantation, he developed laparoscopic live kidney donation, the Domino Paired Donation protocol, and xenotransplanation. A National Academy of Medicine member, he has published over 325 articles and received numerous honors, including the 2022 Liberty Science Center Genius Award, Newsweek’s America’s Greatest Disruptors, and Ukraine’s Order of Merit for humanitarian efforts.
Tuesday, May 20 2025
2:45-4:00pm CT
3:45-5:00pm ET
Abstract
For decades, Robert Montgomery, MD, PhD, the H. Leon Pachter, MD, Professor of Surgery at NYU Langone, has pioneered advances to make organ transplants more readily available to patients who need them. Among his pioneering innovations are for example (i) domino kidney transplants—in which multiple living-donor kidneys are swapped so each recipient receives a compatible organ, (ii) the safe use of organs that test positive for hepatitis C, (iii) using organs from other species - xenotransplantation - to help fill vast gaps in organ supply and (iv) development and application of the paradigm changing decent model - brain dead human donors as a targeted testbed for key medical treatments. For these breakthroughs, Dr. Montgomery, who is also chair of the Department of Surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, received the prestigious 2024 Jacobson Innovation Award from the American College of Surgeons.
Dr. Montgomery knows personally all too well about the constraints and gaps in the current transplant ecosystem system having died and been revived multiple times before receiving a heart transplant. He also personally has experienced about the life saving and changing gift of organ donation that enabled him to receive a new heart.
In this designated guest talk and fireside chat Dr. Montgomery will briefly share (i) how the true need for organ transplantation is significantly larger than what waitlist statistics suggest and (ii) his thoughts on the potential of Xeno translation near and medium term, and then (iii) in more depth, discuss pioneering “decent model” and (iv) how it can help accelerate and transform transplantation, including organ preservation advances and potentially medicine more broadly.