Dr. Alejandro Nieponice is currently a Research Assistant Professor of the department of surgery at University of Pittsburgh and faculty of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He is also the Director of minimally invasive esophageal surgery at Fundación Favaloro as well as a surgical associate and Director of the Clinical Translation Unit at the Austral University Hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Dr. Nieponice got his MD PhD degrees at University of Buenos Aires. He joined the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine in 2004 where he conducted his postdoctoral work with Dr. David A. Vorp in the vascular and biomechanics research lab. Prior to that, he completed general surgery residency program in Argentina with focus on esophageal surgery.
In collaboration with Dr. Stephen Badylak, Dr, Blair Jobe and Dr. Adolfo Badaloni, he is utilizing ECM derived scaffolds to regenerate esophageal tissue with the aim of decreasing the morbidity and mortality of current surgical procedures. He is also conducting research with other biomaterials to improve healing of gastrointestinal tissue with the aim of decreasing surgical complications.
Another part of his research has been focused on developing a tissue engineered vascular graft with stem cells in order to improve the outcome of current surgical therapies for vascular disease. For that, he received a Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the American Heart Association.
Dr. Nieponice’s main goal is to foster clinical translation of novel tissue engineering approaches by bridging his surgical and research background. To accomplish that, he has promoted the creation of a Clinical Translation Unit within the operative room, providing full cell culture capabilities to facilitate clinical translation of cell-based technologies.
His work has been recognized with more than 40 international abstracts, 20 peer-reviewed publications and 3 book chapters. He has served as reviewer for the journals of Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials. The technologies he has been working on with his colleagues led to 3 inventions that are under patenting process. He is currently a member of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS).
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CONTACT INFORMATION
Dr. Alejandro NieponicePhone: 412-235-5245
Email: nieponicea@upmc.edu