Dr. Paul Martin studied ways to improve patient health and survival after blood stem cell transplantation. A major area of his research was graft-vs.-host disease, a common transplant complication. GVHD occurs when transplanted donor immune cells attack the patient’s healthy tissues. Dr. Martin found better ways to treat and prevent both acute and chronic forms of GVHD. He led international efforts to develop research priorities for chronic GVHD and to standardize how results are measured in clinical trials of new treatments for the condition. Dr. Martin is also interested in the role of genetic variation in transplantation outcomes. He studied how patterns of small variants in the genomes of both patients and donors affect such patient outcomes as GVHD and mortality with the goal of developing of new targeted drugs.
