Population Health

Peter Reese Receives American Society of Nephrology Distinguished Researcher Award

Honors Work That Increased the Transplant Organ Supply Across the Country

November 2, 2022

By:

Hoag Levins

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Peter Reese, LDI Senior Fellow and University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine professor, has received the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) 2022 Distinguished Researcher Award for co-leading the first kidney and heart trials that made it possible to safely transplant Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infected organs into uninfected recipients, thereby greatly increasing the national organ supply.

The award ceremony will occur at the ASN Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida on November 6.

A Game-Changing Practice

In its citation, the ASN noted that the game-changing practice that used antiviral agents to clear the transplanted organs of HCV “became widely adopted by North American transplant centers and enabled thousands of patients to receive transplants using organs that had been discarded in the past.”

Reese, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Perelman School’s Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy (MEHP). MEHP Chair and LDI Senior Fellow Steven Joffe, MD, MPH, noted, “In addition to his research, Peter has served as Chair of the Ethics Committee and as a member of several other committees at the United Network for Organ Sharing. His leadership at the intersections of transplant medicine, health policy, and ethics is truly exceptional.”

An National Institutes of Health-funded transplant nephrologist and epidemiologist, Reese’s research has focused on developing effective strategies to increase access to solid organ transplantation, improving the process of selecting and caring for living kidney donors, determining outcomes of health policies on vulnerable populations with renal disease, and transplant ethics.

New CKD Initiative

Earlier this year, he was named the director of a new Penn LDI Research Initiative on Improving Management of Chronic Kidney Disease that supports research on improving the management of chronic kidney disease (CKD) with a particular focus on addressing disparities including structural barriers and racial inequities.

Reese received his MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, followed by an internal medicine internship, residency, chief residency, and renal fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He completed fellowships in nephrology and transplant nephrology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He also obtained a masters degree in epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of Paris.