UAB medical student Benjamin Smood recently received an American Society of Transplant Surgeons Presidential Student Mentor Grant.
Benjamin Smood
As part of his $3,500 summer internship grant, Smood will work with the Division of Transplantation’s David K.C. Cooper, M.D., Ph.D., on Cooper’s xenotransplantation research. Smood and Cooper aim to generate composite pig islet-kidney grafts in hopes of transplanting them into baboons in order to demonstrate that they can sustain normoglycemia in diabetic monkeys.
“Ultimately, we hope that this will pave the way for clinical trials of composite xenografts into humans,” Smood said.