Pathogens in the Blood Supply

Organizers

Lorrence H. Green, PhD

Westbury Diagnostics

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences
e-mail

Speakers

Debra Kessler RN, MS

New York Blood Center
e-mail | publications

Debra Kessler is a former psychiatric nurse with a Masters Degree in Health Care Administration. She began work at the New York Blood Center in 1987 and is now the Director of Special Donor and Community Health Services. She is responsible for donor notification and counseling regarding infectious disease testing, and she advises hospital transfusion services about transfusion transmission of infectious diseases. Among other American Association of Blood Banks committees she serves on the Transfusion Transmitted Diseases Committee. She has also been the Principle Investigator at NY Blood Center for many studies, been an author on a number of publications and made numerous professional presentations.

Sanjai Kumar, PhD

Food and Drug Administration
e-mail | website | publications

Sanjai Kumar is Chief, Laboratory of Emerging Pathogens, Division of Emerging and Transfusion transmitted Diseases, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA. His expertise includes diagnostics, and molecular immunology and pathogenesis of malaria and babesiosis, and blood safety from infectious agents. Kumar joined the FDA in 2002 as a Senior Investigator to initiate a research/regulatory program on malaria diagnostics, immunology and pathogenesis. His prior experiences included ten years at National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, five years as Senior Scientist at the US Navy Malaria Program and eight years as Adjunct Faculty, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Kumar serves on several international advisory and grant panels including the World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health. Since 2003, Kumar has served as Associate Editor of Infection and Immunity.

W. Ian Lipkin, MD

Columbia University
e-mail | website | publications

W. Ian Lipkin, MD, is internationally recognized as an authority on the use of molecular methods for pathogen discovery. Lipkin has over 30 years of experience in diagnostics, microbial discovery, and outbreak response; has mentored and trained more than 30 students and post-doctoral fellows; and leads a team of over 65 investigators, post-doctoral fellows, and research and support staff at MSPH. In the 1980s, Lipkin identified AIDS-associated immunological abnormalities and inflammatory neuropathy, which he showed could be treated with plasmapheresis, and demonstrated that early life exposure to viral infections affects neurotransmitter function. He was the first to use purely molecular methods to identify infectious agents, implicated West Nile virus as the cause of the encephalitis epidemic in New York in 1999, assisted the WHO and the Peoples Republic of China during the 2003 SARS outbreak, developed MassTag PCR and Greenechip technology and pioneered the use of high-throughput sequencing in pathogen discovery. He and his team have discovered or characterized more than 400 infectious agents including Borna disease virus, West Nile virus, LuJo virus, human rhinovrirus C, piscine reovirus and canine hepacivirus. Lipkin has been featured by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Discover Magazine, Nature Medicine, the History Channel, National Geographic, National Public Radio, and Wired.

Judy A. Mikovits, PhD

Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease
e-mail | website | publications

Judy Mikovits spent more than 20 years at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, MD, during which time she received her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, investigating mechanisms by which retroviruses dysregulate the delicate balance of cytokines in the immune response. Formally trained as a cell biologist, molecular biologist and virologist, Mikovits's research has since focused on translational research in government, biotechnology, and academic settings. Mikovits joined Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in November of 2006 as the WPI's first Research Director, charged with establishing a translational research program aimed at identifying biomarkers and underlying causes of debilitating neuro-immune diseases. Mikovits has co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications.

Gail Moskowitz, MD

Healthcare Consultant
e-mail | website

Gail Moskowitz specializes in Pathology and the medical leadership of blood and cord blood banks. She provides healthcare consultant services in the fields of blood banking, cellular therapeutics, laboratory medicine, pharmaceutical, medical-legal and regulatory affairs, and medical informatics. Moskowitz is Board Certified and holds academic appointments as a lecturer in Pathology at Harvard Medical School and as an assistant clinical professor of Pathology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Moskowitz has held several posts directing blood banks throughout New York and also served as Chairman of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at St. Vincent's Midtown Hospital in New York. More recently, she has served as the Medical Director of cord blood banks, both private and public. Moskowitz graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Moskowitz was a resident and chief resident in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology and the Morten Grove–Rasmussen Fellow in Immunohematology, all at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She is active in the American Association of Blood Banks and serves on the AABB's Cellular Therapies-Standards Program Unit and on the Board of Directors and on the Scientific and Medical Advisory Panel of the Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation.

Susan L. Stramer, PhD

American Red Cross
e-mail | publications

Susan Stramer received her BS and MS degrees in Biology and Chemistry from Northern Illinois University where her research interest was water microbiology. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Bacteriology with a minor in Toxicology in 1984. Her research focused on poliovirus survival in water and wastewater as a model system for water-borne enteric viruses. She then spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Following that, she was employed at Abbott Laboratories in their Diagnostic Division for nine years working in the areas of product development, R&D, and scientific affairs in support of hepatitis and retroviral assays. During her time at Abbott, she managed manufacturing, support and product development for most of the blood donor screening assays. In 1995, she joined the American Red Cross as Laboratory Director for the National Confirmatory Testing Laboratory. She now serves as the Executive Scientific Officer at the Scientific Support Office within Biomedical Services' Medical Office where she provides scientific leadership in the area of infectious diseases for the National Testing Laboratories and blood collection regions of the Red Cross. Stramer has published more than 100 papers and has been a representative on numerous committees of the AABB and the International Society of Blood Transfusion, including serving on the AABB Board of Directors for the Mid-Atlantic district (2004–2008), as Secretary Treasurer (2009–2010) and now as the Vice President.