Robert Montgomery

MD, Phil, FACS
NYU Langone Health Transplant Institute
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Brief Bio

Dr. Robert A. Montgomery is the Chairman and Professor of Surgery at NYU Langone Health and the Director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute. He received his Doctor of Medicine with Honor from the University of Rochester School of Medicine.  He received his Doctor of Philosophy from Balliol College, The University of Oxford, England in Molecular Immunology.  Montgomery completed his general surgical training, multi-organ transplantation fellowship, and postdoctoral fellowship in Human Molecular Genetics at Johns Hopkins.  For over a decade he served as the Chief of Transplant Surgery and the Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Montgomery was part of the team that developed the laparoscopic procedure for live kidney donation, a procedure that has become the standard throughout the world.  He and the Hopkins team conceived the idea of the Domino Paired Donation (kidney swaps), the Hopkins protocol for desensitization of incompatible kidney transplant patients, and performed the first chain of transplants started by an altruistic donor.  He led the team that performed the first 2-way domino paired donation, 3-way paired donation, 3-way domino paired donation, 4-way paired donation, 4-way domino paired donation, 5-way domino paired donation, 6-way domino paired donation, 8-way multi-institutional domino paired donation, and co-led the first 10-way open chain.  He is credited in the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records with the most kidney transplants performed in 1 day.   He is considered a world expert on kidney transplantation for highly sensitized and ABO incompatible patients and is referred the most complex patients from around the globe.

Dr. Montgomery has had clinical and basic science research supported by the NIH throughout his career.  He has authored 300 peer reviewed articles, cited more than 26,000 times and has an h-index of 84.  His academic interests include HLA sensitization, tolerance protocols including simultaneous solid organ and bone marrow transplantation, bioartificial organs and xenotransplantation.  He has received important awards and distinctions including a Fulbright Scholarship and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and memberships in the Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha academic honor societies. He has been awarded multiple scholarships from The American College of Surgeons and The American Society of Transplant Surgeons.  The National Kidney Foundation of Maryland has recognized his contributions to the field of transplantation with the Champion of Hope Award, the National Kidney Registry with the Terasaki Medical Innovation Award and The Greater New York Hospital Association with the Profile in Courage Award.  He is also became the recipient of a heart transplant in 2018.

Alliance Presentations

XenoTransplantation Kidney

The Xenotransplantation Breakthrough: A Groundbreaking Approach to Increasing Organ Supply

Tuesday, February 01, 2022, at 2:00pm

The organ shortage is the most critical and significant challenge impacting the field of organ transplantation. The lack of organs available for transplantation has prevented a considerable number of patients from attaining a better quality of life and resulted in thousands of waitlist deaths. During this discussion, we will welcome Dr. Robert Montgomery, an innovative transplant surgeon from NYU Langone Health, who led the recent efforts in performing the first successful investigational xenotransplantation procedure using a genetically engineered pig kidney. Join us to hear more about lessons learned from this breakthrough surgery and the latest surrounding the groundbreaking research that is currently underway.

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