Kazuhiko Yamada is a tenured Professor of Surgery and Medicine at Columbia University, and Director of Surgical Research at the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology (CCTI). Dr. Yamada has a broad background in transplantation immunology, as well as in transplant surgery. Dr. Yamada has conducted both allogeneic and xenogeneic transplantation projects at MGH and currently at CCTI. He has been responsible for identifying mechanisms of transplant tolerance in pre-clinical large animal models and developing innovative strategies for the induction of tolerance across both allogeneic and xenogeneic barriers in large animal translational research models. He has extensively studied the role of the thymus and vascularization of cells/tissue in the induction of tolerance. He has developed innovative composite vascularized organs known as thymo-kidneys and islet-kidneys. These composite organs demonstrate the importance of pre-vascularization of cells in the successful induction of transplantation tolerance in preclinical MHC inbred miniature swine models (JI 2000, PNAS 2004, Transplantation 2002, Diabetes 2002, AJT 2010, AJT 2016 etc). He also developed innovative procedures for the induction of tolerance as well as studies for thymic aging by transplanting thymus as an isolated vascularized thymic lobe (VTL) grafts (Transplantation 2002, 2006. PNAS 2006, AJT 2016 etc) and intra-bone bone marrow transplantation (IBBMTx. AJT 2015) in pigs and NHP models. He has extended this strategy to NHP models, using thymokidney (TK), islet-kidney (IK) and thymo-islet-kidney (TIK) grafts in preclinical models of non-human primate allo IK transplantation as well as pig-to-baboon xeno TK/VTL transplantation. He has demonstrated >6 months survival of pig kidney xenografts co-transplanted with vascularized pig thymus grafts in baboons with donor specific unresponsiveness and new T cell development from pig VTL grafts. He has also achieved >300 days macrochimerism and bone marrow engraftment with hematopoietic cell transplantation and accepted donor kidneys in an allogeneic NHP model as well as >60 days macrochimerism across pig to baboon xenotransplant model.