May 2007

 Dr. Allan Kirk Joins the Emory Transplant Center

Coming to Emory from the NIH, where he was a senior investigator and the founding chief of the Transplantation Branch at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Allan Kirk, MD, PhD, is the new scientific director of the Emory Transplant Center and a Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar. While at the NIH, he was also the founding director of the organization's Intramural Organ Transplant Program.

Dr. Kirk will serve as a kidney/pancreas transplant surgeon at Emory University Hospital and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, with a primary appointment in the Department of Surgery and a secondary appointment in the Department of Pediatrics to facilitate novel transplant therapies for children.

An internationally recognized surgical scientist and authority on transplant immunology, Dr. Kirk is the ninth scientist attracted to Georgia research universities by the GRA as an Eminent Scholar — a national model for attracting world-class scientific talent to the state.

"We are extremely fortunate to have Allan Kirk joining us," said Transplant Center Director Dr. Christian Larsen. "He is an international leader in the most important research priority in transplantation — eliminating the need for toxic immunosuppression drugs. Because this has been a major focus of our transplant research at Emory and the Yerkes National Primate Research Center over the past decade, we welcome the opportunity to work closely with Dr. Kirk in advancing this critical research."

Dr. Kirk received his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine in 1987 and his Ph.D. in immunology from Duke in 1992. He completed a general surgery residency at Duke in 1995 and a multi-organ transplantation fellowship at the University of Wisconsin in 1995. He is a Diplomat of the American Board of Surgery and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

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