U of M Medical Fellow to Study Post-Transplant Complications

Tolar Awarded Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Post-Doctoral Fellowship

The Marrow Foundation^® and the National Marrow Donor Program^® (NMDP) are pleased to announce that Jakub Tolar, M.D., Ph.D., received the Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (BIPI) Post-Doctoral Fellowship of the Amy Strelzer Manasevit Scholars Program for the study of Post-Transplant Complications. The fellowship, dedicated to the memory of Amy Strelzer Manasevit, is awarded each year to physicians and scientists in training for careers in immunology and related disciplines, and is made possible through a generous grant from BIPI to The Marrow Foundation.

The mission of the NMDP is to extend and improve life through innovative stem cell therapies. The Marrow Foundation supports the NMDP through strategic fundraising efforts with corporations, foundations and individuals. The $35,000 award is granted to research projects that address immunological issues arising after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation and involve clinical investigations, translational research or basic laboratory investigations. Tolar is a Medical Fellow in the Department of Pediatrics, Hematology-Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplantation at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Tolar's research project is titled the "Effect of Multipotent Adult Progenitor Cells on Immune Response After Bone Marrow Transplantation."

"I am extremely honored to receive this prestigious post-doctoral fellowship. Chemotherapy, chemoradiotherapy and GVHD-associated complications are a leading cause of death after unrelated donor bone marrow transplantation (BMT)," Tolar said. "Key goals of the research project are to determine whether multipotent adult progenitor cells (MAPCs) aid in tissue repair after unrelated donor BMT, and to determine whether MAPCs suppress graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). The most compelling argument for the use of MAPCs as a therapeutic modality in blood and marrow transplantation is to treat tissue injury associated with chemotherapy, chemoradiotherapy or GVHD."

Previously, Tolar received a doctorate in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Genetics from the University of Minnesota. He was a resident in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Anatomy at Charles University in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and a visiting scientist at Adenbrooks Hospital and Department of Pathology, Cambridge University, United Kingdom.

The Marrow Foundation

The Amy Strelzer Manasevit Scholars Program for the Study of Post Transplant Complications was established by The Marrow Foundation in memory of a patient who had a successful marrow transplant facilitated by the NMDP but later succumbed to pneumonia. In collaboration with Amy's family and friends, the Foundation has raised nearly $2.5 million over the past five years to support the research projects of 10 scholars and three BIPI post-doctoral fellows. Contributions to the Scholars Program have come from numerous corporations and foundations including the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation of Baltimore, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, the F.M. Kirby Foundation Inc., and the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation. The awards are granted annually and handed out at the annual meeting of the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation and the International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry.

National Marrow Donor Program