Dr. Leonardo V. Riella is the Harold and Ellen Danser Endowed Chair in Transplantation and Associate Professor of Medicine and Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Riella is the Director of Kidney Transplantation at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and a Senior Investigator at the Center for Transplantation Science. He is also an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and an Associate and Section Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation.
He completed his Internal Medicine Residency at BWH and his Nephrology and Transplantation Fellowship at the combined BWH and Massachusetts General Hospital Program, at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Riella’s research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of immune regulation and on the development of novel therapies to promote organ tolerance. His lab is also tackling the organ transplant shortage head-on by pioneering two extraordinary paths: bioengineering kidneys from human stem cells and turning to gene-modified pigs as potential kidney donors. These innovative approaches could drastically increase the availability of organs and transform the transplant landscape.
He is also involved in translational/clinical trials to identify earlier non-invasive markers of rejection and to develop novel assays to measure the immune function in transplant recipients. He is the leader of the TANGO consortium, a multi-center study that investigates the recurrence of glomerular disease post-transplant and the GENIE study that investigates a dietary intervention in patients with nephrotic syndrome.
Dr. Riella has over 180 publications in major journals, including New England Journal of Medicine, Circulation, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Immunology, Transplantation and American Transplant Journal. He is currently the Section Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation. He has received multiple awards, including the Young Innovator Award of the American Society of Transplantation (AST), the 2016 Basic Science Career Development Award from the AST, and the 2020 Harvard Faculty Teaching Award. He is currently funded by the NIH, Department of Defense, Industry and Philanthropy.
