David Sachs, MD

(from the Lawrence Transplant Foundation website) Dr. Sachs graduated from Harvard College in 1963 and from Harvard Medical School in 1968. He trained as a surgical resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) before moving to the National Institutes of Health, where he became Chief of the Immunology Branch of the National Cancer Institute in 1982. In 1991, he returned to the MGH as Director of the Transplantation Biology Research Center and as a Professor of Surgery and Immunology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sachs has made numerous seminal discoveries in the field of transplantation and has published over 650 articles in scientific journals. He has worked consistently at the interface between basic research and clinical applications. He is committed to developing better therapies for transplant patients, including the induction of tolerance to avoid the need for immunosuppressive drugs and the development of new sources of organs from animals to alleviate the severe shortage. He is the editor of several important immunology journals, including Transplantation and Xenotransplantation. He has received many honors and prizes for his work, including the Public Health Service Meritorious Service Award in 1984, the Jean Borel Award in Transplantation in 1998 and the Roche/AST Distinguished Achievement Award in 2005. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1996. Dr. Sachs married Kristina Olsson in 1969 and they have 4 children. He enjoys sailing, fishing, skiing, photography, woodworking, squash and gardening. He is fluent in English, French, Swedish and German.