Fizza Naqvi, MBBS

Dr. Russell Wesson is the Surgical Director of Kidney Transplantation and a liver and kidney transplant surgeon at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His areas of clinical expertise include Liver, Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation, Hepatobiliary surgery, Living Liver and Kidney donation and Transplantation for Colorectal Metastasis. Dr. Wesson completed his General Surgery Residency in 2016 at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was an intern at Johns Hopkins in 2009 after receiving his medical degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. After his residency, Dr. Wesson completed the American Society of Transplant Surgery accredited Fellowship in Abdominal Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgery at Johns Hopkins. He continued on faculty within the division of transplant surgery. Dr. Wesson's academic and research focuses on basic and translational research within the context of liver and kidney transplantation and organ injury. He is active as a principal investigator on multiple clinical trials investigating novel immunosuppressive agents. He is a member of the American Society of Transplant Surgery as well as the American Transplantation Society. To support Dr. Wesson's research, visit: https://secure.jhu.edu/form/Wesson

Dr. Cameron is the director of the Johns Hopkins Department of Surgery and surgeon-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Cameron was born at Johns Hopkins and raised in Baltimore. He attended Harvard College and returned to Johns Hopkins where he obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. His surgical training was spent at the Massachusetts General Hospital and then at UCLA for Liver Transplantation. He returned to Hopkins as Head of the Liver Transplant Program in 2006. His laboratory studies stem cells and the liver to promote drug-free transplantation and other pursuits include the use of social media to increase organ donation. He is married to Lisa, a lawyer, and has two children, Charlotte and John. To support Dr. Cameron's research, visit: https://secure.jhu.edu/form/Cameron

In her first decade as a pediatric oncologist, Dr. Symons already has shown an impressive ability to juggle multiple research projects, in addition to caring for patients.One of Dr. Symons' research pursuits focuses on using a novel immunotherapy approach to treating both solid tumors and hematologic (blood-borne) malignancies. The basis of her work stems from the theory that cancer patients' immune systems should recognize tumor cells as foreign and destroy them. This doesn't happen, theorizes Dr. Symons, because the immune system attacks only those cells it perceives as dangerous—not cancer cells, which it sees simply as foreign. That's where her research comes into play.Evaluating an experimental therapy, Dr. Symons is pairing donor lymphocytes (white blood cells that activate the body's immune system) with chemotherapy to determine if this combination will "awaken" patients' immune systems to the danger of existing cancer cells and, in turn, elicit an immune response.In a separate yet equally compelling research endeavor, Dr. Symons is working to increase the availability of donors for children whose cancer requires bone marrow transplants (BMTs) as a potentially lifesaving treatment. "It can be challenging to find a 'matched' donor," says Dr. Symons, who explains that only about 40 percent of patients who require a BMT find a matched donor. "Sometimes, we don't have the benefit of time, because remissions can be short-lived. But almost all patients have a half-matched donor: a parent, sibling, or child," adds Dr. Symons, who is examining ways to reduce BMT-related complications ordinarily associated with half-matched donors after ablative (high dose) chemotherapy."Like anything else that's new, it will take some time to prove that this is a feasible option that's safe," she says. But she's optimistic. "It has the potential to revolutionize BMT." Dr. Symons knows it's worth the wait. "Seeing the research I do in the lab translate into clinical trials, then seeing patients in these trials survive long term, is incredibly rewarding," she says.