AABB Foundation Award for Innovative Research

Renamed in 2016, the AABB Foundation Award for Innovative Research recognizes a scientist whose original research resulted in an important contribution to the body of scientific knowledge in transfusion medicine or biotherapies. The award recipient receives a $1,000 honorarium and must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• The recipient must be an AABB Foundation Scholar who completed his/her early-career grant research in the thirty-six (36) months immediately prior to receipt of the Award. After this 3-year period, a Scholar is no longer eligible for the award.
• The recipient need not be a member of AABB.
• The Foundation prefers that the recipient attend the AABB Annual Meeting, where the Award will be presented and the recipient provides an update on his/her research program; however, the Foundation will not reimburse the recipient for travel expenses.
• The AABB Foundation Scientific Research Grants Review Committee (GRC) annually selects a Foundation Scholar to recommend as the award recipient to the AABB Foundation Board of Directors. The Board of Directors evaluates the research based equally upon the innovation and creativity exhibited, and the practical impact the research will have on patient outcomes in transfusion medicine and biotherapies.

Please send all inquiries about this award to awards@aabb.org.

2024 Award Recipient

Vijay Bhoj, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA

Citation:

For his 2018 AABB Foundation-funded research project, titled “Dissecting the Humoral Response to FVIII for Therapeutic Applications.” The project led to a deeper understanding of CAR T therapies in cancer patients that set the stage for purposeful development of such therapies for antibody-mediated diseases and later developed a potential CAR T cell therapy for autoimmune pemphigus vulgaris leading to a currently enrolling clinical trial. These therapies may extend to other conditions with the hopes of finding curative solutions for diseases that are currently managed with long term immunosuppressive therapies and often prone to relapse.

Creating these therapies for non-cancer application has required creativity with regard to various aspects of CAR design, and safety and efficacy evaluation as the model and "rules" that guided anti-cancer CAR T development often do not apply. Since the completion of his AABB Foundation grant in 2020, Dr. Bhoj has co-authored 17 scientific papers, of which he is senior (last) author on six.

Past Recipients of the AABB Foundation Award for Innovative Research

2023 Robert Sheppard Nickel, MD, MSC
2022 Moritz Stolla, MD, PhD
2021 David Gibb, MD, PhD
2020 Angelo D'Alessandro, PhD
2019 Krystalyn E. Hudson, PhD
2018 Sean Stowell, MD
2017 Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, PhD
2016 Anand Padmanabhan, MD, PhD
2015 Jianhua Yu, PhD
2014 Eldad A. Hod, MD
2013 Chance John Luckey, MD, PhD
2012 Taku Kambayashi, MD, PhD
2011 Cheryl Lobo, PhD
2010 Christine Margaret Cserti-Gazdewich, MD, FRCPC
2009 Lan Zhou, MD, PhD
2008 Jose A. Cancelas, MD, PhD
2007 James C. Zimring, MD, PhD
2006 Andrés Hidalgo, PhD
2005 Carl Goodyear, PhD

*In 2022, the name of this award changed from National Blood Foundation Award for Innovative Research to AABB Foundation Award for Innovative Research.

*In 2016, the name of this award changed from Jack Latham Memorial Award for Innovative Research to National Blood Foundation Award for Innovative Research.

*In 2013, the name of this award changed from David B. Pall Prize for Innovative Research in Transfusion Medicine to Jack Latham Memorial Award for Innovative Research.