Industry Collaboration Group member since 2012
Director of Vitalant Research Institute and Senior Vice President for Research and Scientific Affairs at Vitalant
United States
Michael Busch earned his MD and PhD degrees at the University of Southern California, followed by residency training in pathology, laboratory medicine and transfusion medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is currently the Director of the Vitalant Research Institute and Senior Vice President for Research and Scientific Affairs at Vitalant, a national network of blood centres and donor testing laboratories. He is also a Professor of Laboratory Medicine at UCSF.
His major research interests include:
- The epidemiology, pathogenesis and laboratory evaluation of transfusion-associated viral infections, including HIV-1/2, HTLV-I/II, HBV and HCV, as well as blood safety implications of new and emerging potential transfusion-transmissible infectious diseases (such as West Nile virus, Dengue and Zika viruses, chikungunya virus, T. cruzi, babesia and SARS-CoV-2)
- Development and implementation of new or improved laboratory assays and blood donor screening protocols, clinical evaluation and management, and possible prevention by pathogen inactivation of blood-borne infections, with a particular focus on new techniques for mass screening of blood donations using nucleic acid amplification technology (NAT) to reduce the infectious window period and detect new and emerging infectious diseases
- Mechanisms and prevention of immunological consequences of transfusions, including transfusion-induced immune modulation, viral reactivation, microchimerism, graft-vs-host disease, transfusion-related acute lung injury and alloimmunization
- Mechanisms of HIV persistence and development, validation and application of novel assays to quantify HIV reservoirs in HIV-suppressed subjects in the context of cure research interventions
- Blood donor genetic and RBC and platelet metabolic characteristics that impact blood cell integrity and function following processing and storage and the associated efficacy of transfusions in various recipient populations
Michael has published more than 600 peer-reviewed original scientific articles and more than 150 review articles, editorials and book chapters.