Dana-Farber researcher, Nicoletta Cieri, MD, PhD, awarded Amy Strelzer Manasevit Research Program grant

The NMDP awarded Nicoletta Cieri, MD, PhD, its Amy Strelzer Manasevit Research Program grant. Cieri is one of only two researchers to receive this award, which is one of the largest and most coveted grants in the transplant and cellular therapy field. The award is given to early-career researchers investigating preventions or treatments to life-threatening complications following all forms of cellular therapy and is funded through philanthropic gifts to NMDP.

Cieri is a postdoctoral fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The grant will help her evaluate a large dataset of patients who have undergone allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) – a potentially life-saving option for many blood disorders but one that is often complicated by graft-versus-host disease (GvHD). Cieri's research will assess allo-HCT across different donor types and transplant modalities to improve personalized risk assessment for GvHD and enable individualized tailoring of post-transplant immunosuppression.

The other grant recipient is Faruk Sacirbegovic, PhD, Starzl Transplantation Institute at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

"We are honored to support Drs. Cieri and Sacirbegovic in their research efforts to improve the lives of those battling blood cancers and blood disorders. We are especially grateful to the Moore family, who generously funded the Amy Scholars Research Program in 2024," said Joy King, Chief Advancement Officer, NMDP, and Executive Director, NMDP Foundation. "We are confident that the work of these two distinguished researchers will impact many lives, and we are proud to support their work."

Each recipient will receive $400,000 each across 5 years to assist their research. Since 1998, NMDP has invested more than $12 million, funding 51 early-career investigators and helping them develop research portfolios and establish their laboratories. Amy Scholar award recipients have gone on to be leaders in the HCT field, securing over $250 million in aggregate federal funding.

*This press release was adapted from a release issued by NMDP.