Leonardo V. Riella MD, PhD

Dr. Leonardo V. Riella is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a Physician-Scientist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston. He is the Medical Director of Vascularized Composite Tissue Transplantation, and Associate Director of Kidney Transplantation at BWH. He is also an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and 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, 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. He is also investigating how the diet may affect the immune system and promote auto-immune diseases.

He is also involved in translational/clinical trials that are attempting to identify earlier non-invasive markers of rejection and develop novel assays to measure the immune function in transplant recipients. He is the leader of the TANGO study, a multi-center study that investigates recurrence of glomerular disease post-transplant and the GENIE study that investigates a dietary intervention in patients with nephrotic syndrome.

Dr. Riella has published numerous papers, chapters and has received multiple awards, including the Young Innovator Award of the American Society of Transplantation (AST) and the 2016 Basic Science Career Development Award from the AST. He is currently funded by the American Heart Association, Department of Defense and Industry grants.