About Us
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| Mission and History |
What sets STI apart? |
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| Mission and History |
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The mission of the Starzl Transplantation Institute (STI) is to improve the clinical, scientific, and social aspects of transplantation. The institute's comprehensive approach has kept STI consistently at the forefront of this lifesaving field.
Since its establishment in 1985 as the University of Pittsburgh Transplantation Institute, STI has been a leading international resource dedicated to helping people with end-stage organ failure. The institute was renamed in 1996 in honor of Thomas E. Starzl, MD, PhD, widely known as the "modern-day father" of organ transplantation.
For more than two decades, Dr. Starzl and his colleagues in Pittsburgh have expanded the frontiers of transplantation by pioneering such developments as cyclosporine and tacrolimus (formerly FK506), two key immunosuppressants, and the concepts of small-bowel and multi-organ transplantation.
STI continues its commitment to finding solutions to the field's most challenging problems, such as the mysteries of the immune system, the critically short supply of donor organs, safer immunosuppression, organ preservation, and the multiple problems associated with rejection. The institute is heavily involved with advances in areas such as pancreas transplants, tolerance induction, clinical chimerism, new immunosuppressive agents, gene therapy of graft rejection, tumor therapy, and xenotransplantation. |
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| What sets STI apart? |
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The breadth and depth of STI's efforts to develop innovative forms of transplantation distinguishes this transplant program from any other. At the University of Pittsburgh and the UPMC Health System, STI promotes a multidisciplinary environment that unites basic and clinical research with a team of some of the world's top transplant surgeons. STI's multidisciplinary cadre of the "best and brightest" transplantation professionals includes surgeons, gastroenterologists/hepatologists, anesthesiologists, pathologists, nephrologists, immunologists, infectious disease specialists, and critical care physicians. Research faculty come from a variety of disciplines including immunology, molecular biology, genetics, cell physiology, and other biological sciences.
Paralleling its clinical care and research efforts, another component of STI's goal is to transfer its accumulated expertise in transplantation to future generations of transplant specialists. STI promotes a collegial atmosphere of teaching and learning that has given rise to one of the world's premiere programs for training transplant clinicians and researchers. To date, more than 100 fellows and 750 visiting clinicians/ scientists have been trained here, and many have gone on to help build transplant programs around the world. |
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