Profiles

Tomas Ganz is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Pathology at UCLA. He received his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in Applied Physics and MD and advanced medical training from UCLA. He discovered and characterized hepcidin and erythroferrone, the principal hormones of iron homeostasis, authoring more than 400 publications and more than 30 book chapters, with current H-index of 166 (Google Scholar). Dr. Ganz has served as an Associate Editor of Blood, President of the International Bioiron Society and a member of the hematology-focused study sections of the National Institutes of Health. He has helped start three biotechnology enterprises, focused on the diagnostic and therapeutic applications of hepcidin and erythroferrone, and has advised leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. He received the Marcel Simon Award of the International Bioiron Society in 2005, for the discovery of hepcidin and the American Society of Hematology E. Donnall Thomas Award in 2014 for “groundbreaking research in iron homeostasis, including the discovery of the iron-regulatory hormone hepcidin and investigation of its roles in iron metabolism”. He has trained more than thirty graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty in his research laboratory. His current research interests include systemic iron metabolism and its regulation, the role of iron in innate immunity and infection, the interaction between erythropoiesis and iron homeostasis, and the pathogenesis of beta-thalassemia and other iron-loading anemias.