Laurence Turka, MD

Laurence Turka, MD, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Research Co-Director of The Transplant Institute at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Co-Director of the Harvard Institute of Translational Immunology.  He is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of immune tolerance and transplantation immunology. His contributions include pioneering work in the areas of the use of costimulatory blockade to induce transplantation tolerance, the role of deletion in the induction of peripheral tolerance, and the barrier to tolerance which is created by non-specific T cell deletion.

Dr. Turka has been involved in the Immune Tolerance Network since its inception, and is currently the Deputy Director for Tolerance Assays and Data Analysis, a member of the Network Steering Committee and the Network Executive Committee, and Chair of the Drug Withdrawal Committee. He is a  past-President of the American Society of Transplantation, and past Chair of the NIAID Board of Scientific Counselors. Dr. Turka is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.