Jeanine Walenga PhD

Dr. Walenga holds a full-time faculty position as a Professor of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at Loyola University Chicago, practicing at the Loyola University Medical Center (Maywood, IL) where she is active in both clinical coagulation diagnostics and research. She received her BS degree from the University of Illinois (Champaign and Chicago Medical Center) in medical laboratory sciences and her PhD in pharmacology from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI, France). She maintains her medical technology certification through the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP).

Dr. Walenga has served as the Medical Director of the Loyola Core and Specials Clinical Coagulation Laboratories, since 2003. She is active in teaching medical students, residents, fellows, and graduate students and serves as the Program Director for several courses including the Pathology Residents’ Coagulation Rotation. She has served as the Co-Director of the Hemostasis and Thrombosis Research Unit, since 1987.

The research of Dr. Walenga focuses on vascular pathology in the combined areas of the mechanisms of thrombosis, development and clinical management of anticoagulant therapeutics, and clinical laboratory medicine. Her contributions to science stem from investigations that progressed from fundamental basic science to translation into clinical practice. Studies on the structure-activity of heparin, including thesis work on pentasaccharide, led to the development of low molecular weight heparins and fondaparinux. Later developments centered on target-specific thrombin and FXa inhibitor anticoagulant drugs (current DOACs). An associated major work was the immunogenicity of heparins, heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), and argatroban clinical trials. New technologies along with diagnostic and anticoagulant monitoring assays for the clinical laboratory were simultaneously developed. The present research has evolved into platelet activation/inflammation as related to thrombosis and bleeding associated with implanted cardiac devices and surgical outcomes.