Transfusion Medicine Fellowship

Ross Fasano, MD, whose primary location is at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, directs this 1-2 year academic and applied fellowship in Transfusion Medicine. The Transfusion Medicine Clinical Fellowship provides interactions with all members of the Emory Center for Transfusion and Cellular Therapies (CTCT). Extensive experience with transfusion support of neonatal, pediatric, obstetric, trauma, surgical and transplant (bone marrow, liver, heart, lung, kidney, and pancreas) patients is provided through rotations at Emory University Hospital, Emory University Hospital-Midtown, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Grady Memorial Hospital, and Emory Orthopedic and Spine Hospital. Rotations through the American Red Cross Blood Services (Southern Region) provides practical experience in blood donor and donor center management and support. This Transfusion Medicine Fellowship is ACGME-accredited and meets all requirements of the American Board of Pathology. Fellows are expected to accrue sufficient knowledge through didactic lectures, focused reading, practical experience with transfusion recipients and blood donors, and academic activities to successfully pass the Board Examination for Transfusion Medicine / Blood Banking at the conclusion of their Fellowship.

Additionally, our Transfusion Medicine Fellowship provides exposure to state of the art cellular therapy activities. These include bone marrow and peripheral blood hematopoietic stem cell collection, cell processing and storage, and transplantation. Cutting-edge, "first-in-human" cellular therapy clinical studies are supported by a state of the art cGMP experimental cell handling facility housed in the Blood Bank at the Emory University Hospital. Fellows are also expected to actively participate on the very busy CTCT Apheresis Service, which performs therapeutic plasma exchange, red cell exchange, thrombocytopheresis, LDL apheresis, and photopheresis. Extensive experience with special coagulation and HLA testing are also available to CTCT Fellows. These capabilities make the Emory CTCT program one of the most unique, comprehensive, and in depth academic Fellowship training programs in Transfusion Medicine and Blood Banking.

While Fellows are encouraged to pursue a variety of basic, translational, and clinical research projects during their Fellowship, an optional 12 months of additional training with a research focus is also available to the interested applicant. This second Fellowship year is supported by an NIH T32 training grant and allows the Fellow additional focus and emphasis on research projects that will serve as the beginnings of an academic career in transfusion medicine. Current projects available to Fellows (and supported by a variety of NIH funding sources including a Program Project Grant, 2 R01 grants, a Transfusion Medicine / Hemostasis Clinical Network contract, and several STTR small business translational research grants) include: clinical trials in cytomegalovirus transmission in transfusion recipients; clinical trials focused on optimized transfusion support of selected patient populations; translational research intended to develop improved devices for blood compatibility testing; clinical/translational research to study the effects of blood storage of vasoresponsiveness; and basic research in the mechanisms of RBC and platelet alloimmunization following transfusion.