David McKenna

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Credentials

MD

Bio

Dr. McKenna holds the American Red Cross Chair in Transfusion Medicine and is Director of the Division of Transfusion Medicine. He also serves as the Scientific and Medical Director of Molecular and Cellular Therapeutics (MCT), the University's cGMP facility, as well as Laboratory and Medical Director of the University of Minnesota Medical Center Clinical Cell Therapy Laboratory and the director of the fellowship program in Transfusion Medicine/Blood Banking. McKenna is an active AABB member, serving on the board of directors for four years and leading the AABB Cellular Therapy Section Coordinating Committee for several years. He was a key investigator in the NIH-sponsored Production Assistance for Cellular Therapies contract from 2003-2015.

Research Summary

Interests include umbilical cord blood research, quality assurance/quality control in cellular therapy, and translational research/clinical scale-up of biotherapeutics.

Publications

• Mamo T, Hippen KL, MacMillan ML, Brunstein CG, Miller JS, Wagner JE, Blazar BR, McKenna DH. Regulatory T cells: A review of manufacturing and clinical utility. Transfusion. 2022 Apr;62(4):904-915. doi: 10.1111/trf.16797.
• Walton K, Fernandez MR, Sagatys EM, Reff J, Kim J, Lee MC, Kiluk J, Hui JYC, McKenna D, Hupp M, Forster C, Linden MA, Lawrence NJ, Lawrence HR, Pidala J, Pavletic SZ, Blazar BR, Sebti SM, Cleveland JL, Anasetti C, Betts BC. Metabolic reprogramming augments potency of human pSTAT3-inhibited iTregs to suppress alloreactivity. JCI Insight. 2020 Apr 7. pii: 136437. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.136437.
• Hussein E, DeFor T, Wagner JE, Sumstad D, Brunstein CG, McKenna DH. Evaluation of post-thaw CFU-GM: clinical utility and role in quality assessment of umbilical cord blood in patients receiving single unit transplant. Transfusion. 2019 Nov 22. doi: 10.1111/trf.15592. 
• McKenna D. Challenges in the cGMP manufacturing of MSCs for multicenter academia trials. Transfusion (2016);56(4):18S-9S. doi: 10.1111/trf.13565.
• Courville EL*, Singh C*, Yohe S, Linden MA, Naemi K, Berger M, Ustun C, McKenna R, Dolan M. Patients with a history of prior chemotherapy and isolated del(20q) with minimal myelodysplasia have an indolent course. *co-first authors. Am J Clinical Pathol.2016 Apr; 145(4):459-66.