Wayne J Hawthorne, Australia

Dr Wayne Hawthorne is Professor of Transplantation at the Department of Surgery, The University of Sydney, and is the Director of the National Pancreas and Islet Transplant Laboratories, at Westmead Hospital, Westmead.

He is the Immediate Past President of the International Xenotransplantation Association (IXA), the current President of the Australasian College of Biomedical Sciences (ACBMS), Chairman of the Xenotransplantation Working Group of The Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ) and Chairman of the Western Sydney Local Health District Animal Ethics Committee (WSLHD AEC).

Professor Hawthorne’s career has focused on treatments for Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), having established the laboratory and techniques to perform islet cell isolation for Australia's First Clinical Islet Transplant program. Paralleling the clinical program Professor Hawthorne has dedicated his research career to establishing Australia’s Islet Cell and Xenotransplantation research programs, obtaining ongoing NH&MRC and JDRF grants for more than 25 years. He developed and has established the Westmead non-human-primate (NHP) facility and has extensive small and large animal surgical and anaesthetic expertise that few others have in Australia. He has decades of expertise in large animal models, including the use of NHP’s in research. He continues to oversee the islet and xenotransplant research programs at the Westmead facility and remains dedicated to continuing to develop and provide the most Ethical and humane ways to run medical research projects and ensure their translation to the clinic along with the training of many scientists, clinicians and surgeons. 

A founding researcher of the Centre for Transplant and Renal Research at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research and The University of Sydney, he remains responsible for surgical research projects where he has supervised many students including; PhD, Masters, Hons and MD students. He continues to build on the success of his research work and his team have translated the transplantation treatments for T1D, being the first in Australia to perform both Clinical Allo and Auto islet cell isolation and transplantation and to perform islet after kidney and combined islet/kidney transplants into clinical patients. He has performed more than 330 clinical islet isolations and islet cell transplants in both adults and children as young as 4 years of age. He has >250 journal publications, 20 books and book chapters and >700 published proceedings along with presenting numerous International and National presentations.