Two Harvard physicians to receive Starzl Prize on Wednesday

Pittsburg Post - Gazette | Mark Roth
Two Harvard physicians will receive this year's Thomas E. Starzl Prize in Surgery and Immunology, which honors the surgery pioneer who turned UPMC into a world-renowned transplant center.
The award will go to David Sachs and A. Benedict Cosimi, both surgery professors at Harvard, for their work in weaning some kidney transplant patients completely off of immunosuppressant drugs. The two physicians will give a lecture on their work at 4 p.m. Wednesday in Lecture Room 6 of Scaife Hall in Oakland.
When patients receive an organ from a donor, their bodies see it as foreign tissue and attack it, which is why most organ transplant patients must take immunosuppressant medications for the rest of their lives. Those drugs can put the patients at risk for cancer and infections.
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