Leslie S. Kean MD, PhD

Leslie S. Kean, MD Ph.D., is a clinician-scientist with extensive laboratory and clinical expertise in transplantation immunology. She is the Director of Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and a Full Professor at Harvard University. Dr. Kean spent the early part of her training at Emory University School of Medicine where she received her MD/Ph.D. and completed her residency and fellowship. Before, coming to Boston Children's, Dr. Kean was an associate professor at Seattle Children's Hospital.
Dr. Kean’s research program is focused on the immunology of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The overarching goal of her research is to understand mechanisms underlying immune tolerance after transplantation, with a specific focus on mixed-chimerism induction for solid organ transplantation, graft-versus-host disease (GvHD), transplant rejection, and the reconstitution of protective immunity after transplantation. Dr. Kean’s work on mixed-chimerism, transplant rejection, and GvHD have led to the creation of novel, MHC-defined non-human primate models of both engraftment and GvHD and to several first-in-disease clinical trials. She has used both the animal models and the mechanistic studies linked to her clinical trials to investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of immune reconstitution, GvHD, and transplant rejection, and to test the impact that novel immunosuppressive therapies can make on these processes.