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Alexander S. Krupnick, MD

Peter Angelos Distinguished Professor of Surgery

Academic Title:

Professor

Primary Appointment:

Surgery

Secondary Appointment(s):

Microbiology and Immunology

Administrative Title:

Director, Lung Transplant Program - Department of Surgery; Division Chief of Thoracic Surgery

Additional Title:

Professor, Vice Chair of Academic Affairs, Department of Surgery

Email:

Akrupnick@som.umaryland.edu

Location:

Baltimore, MD

Phone (Primary):

410-328-6366

Fax:

410-328-0693

Education and Training

Education

1988 - 1992: BS, University of Michigan Honors College, Ann Arbor, Michigan with Highest Honors

1992 - 1996: MD, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan Cum Laude

Biosketch

Sasha Krupnick is a general thoracic surgeon who specializes in the treatment of lung cancer, esophageal cancer, lung transplantation as well as benign thoracic disorders. He immigrated with his family to the United States in 1979 from the former USSR and grew up in the Midwest, receiving his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Michigan. He then pursued general surgery training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia followed by a lung transplantation and thoracic surgery fellowship in Washington University in St Louis. He remained on faculty at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in Washington University after completing training and joined the University of Maryland in 2020..

  1. Krupnick has dedicated his career to both advancing the field of lung transplantation and care of patients with thoracic malignancies. His lung transplantation training and experience under Joel Cooper and Alec Patterson, credited with first successful human lung transplant, puts him at the forefront of the field. He has performed hundreds of lung transplants and was thus recruited in 2020 as the surgical director of the University of Maryland lung transplant program. In addition he has advanced the field of minimally invasive oncologic surgery and is an expert at minimally invasive pulmonary and esophageal resections.
  2. Krupnick will be providing the full range of thoracic surgery services, including minimally invasive lung and esophageal resections, on the University of Maryland Medical School main campus, the VA Medical center as well as St. Joe’s.

In addition to clinical work Dr. Krupnick runs an NIH funded laboratory which he started after finishing his training in 2007. His laboratory mirrors his clinical interests and focuses on the development of new and novel mechanisms of immunosuppression for the lung allograft and well as cancer immunotherapy. He, along with his colleagues, developed the world’s first mouse model of vascularized lung transplantation that mirrors human physiology. This model has allowed for multiple avenues of investigation into both tolerance induction and rejection and has facilitated the development of novel immunosuppression therapies.   His laboratory has made several seminal discoveries regarding the role of the gut microbiome in chronic rejection, the role of previously unrecognized cell types (such as the eosinophil) in tolerance induction as well as mechanisms of early immunologic intervention that can induce long-term graft survival.

In addition to transplantation the Krupnick laboratory also has an interest in lung cancer immunotherapy. He has specifically made the discovery that immunologic control of lung cancer depends on the inherent function of a cell population known as the natural killer cell. His laboratory went on to describe biologic reasons why individuals with poor natural killer cell function are susceptible and those with robust natural killer cell function are resistant to the development of lung cancer. In addition Dr. Krupnick’s laboratory has developed a drug specially designed to improve natural killer cell function (called OMCPmutIL-2 or OPL101) which is expected to begin human clinical trials as early as 2022 in partnership with Valo Health.

Highlighted Publications

Krupnick AS, Gelman AE, Barchet W, Richardson S, Kreisel FH, Turka LA, Colonna M, Patterson GA,Kreisel D. Cutting Edge: Murine Vascular Endothelium Activates and Induces the Generation of Allogeneic CD4+25+Foxp3+ Regulatory T Cells. Journal of Immunology 175: 6265-6270   (2005) *Nominated to Faculty of 1000

Kreisel D, Lai J, Richardson SB, Ibricevic A, Nava RG, Lin X, Li W, Kornfeld CG,Miller MJ, Brody SL, Gelman AE, Krupnick AS .Polarized Alloantigen Presentation by Airway Epithelial Cells Contributes to Direct CD8+  T Cell Activation in the Airway Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol. 2010.  PMC3135837     

Kreisel D, Richardson SB, Li W, Lin X, Kornfeld CG, Sugimoto S, Hsieh CS, Gelman AE, Krupnick AS. Cutting edge: MHC class II expression by pulmonary nonhematopoietic cells plays a critical role  in controlling local inflammatory responses. J Immunol. 2010 Oct 1;185(7):3809-13. PMC3897247 *Nominated to Faculty of 1000

Krupnick AS, Lin X, Li W, Higashikubo R, Zinselmeyer BH, Hartzler H, Toth K, Ritter JH, Berezin MY, Wang ST, Miller MJ, Gelman AE, Kreisel D. Central memory  CD8+  T  lymphocytes  mediate  lung allograft  acceptance.  Journal of Clinical Investigation 2014  Mar  3;124(3):1130-43.    PMC3938255

Christopher B. Medina, Parul Mehrotra, Sanja Arandjelovic, Justin S. A. Perry, Yizhan Guo, Sho Morioka, Brady Barron, Scott F. Walk, Bart Ghesquière, Alexander S. Krupnick, Ulrike Lorenz & Kodi S. Ravichandran. Metabolites released from apoptotic cells act as tissue messengers.  Nature 2020 Mar 18;  580, pp130–135

Onyema OO, Guo Y, Wang Q, Stoler MH, Lau C, Li K, Nazaroff CD, Wang X, Li W, Kreisel D, Gelman AE, Lee JJ, Jacobsen EA, Krupnick AS. Eosinophils promote inducible NOS-mediated lung allograft acceptance. JCI Insight. 2017 Dec 21;2(24). pii: 96455. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.96455. PMID:29263310

Dr. Krupnick's publications on PubMed

Additional Publication Citations

Clinical Specialty Details

Grants and Contracts

Links of Interest

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