Agnieszka Czechowicz

Agnieszka Czechowicz, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine

Research Description: Dr. Czechowicz’s research aims to reveal how hematopoietic stem cells interact with their microenvironment in order to subsequently modulate these interactions to ultimately improve bone marrow transplantation. In particular she has been focused on antibody-based conditioning regimens that enable safe and effective transplantation. Her work has developed several pre-clinical methods that are rapidly developing into clinical therapies. In animal models her lab has found that antibodies can be used to induce donor tolerance, even across large MHC-mismatches. This may aid tremendously in using bone marrow transplantation to induce mixed chimerism in patients, and ultimately aid in tolerance to solid organ transplants. This includes pancreatic or islet transplantion that could subsequently be used to treat diabetes. In addition, through safe bone marrow transplantation it is possible to eliminate auto-reactive host immune systems and replace them with donor immune systems, further preventing Type I diabetes in susceptible or pre-diabetic individuals.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1.  Pang WW, Czechowicz A, Logan AC, Bhardwaj R, Poyser J, Park CY, Weissman IL, Shizuru JA. Anti-CD117 antibody depletes normal and myelodysplastic syndrome human hematopoietic stem cells in xenografted mice. Blood. 2019 May 9;133(19):2069-2078. doi: 10.1182/blood-2018-06-858159. PMID: 30745302; PMCID: PMC6509544. 

  2. Kwon HS, Logan AC, Chhabra A, Pang WW, Czechowicz A, Tate K, Le A, Poyser J, Hollis R, Kelly BV, Kohn DB, Weissman IL, Prohaska SS, Shizuru JA. Anti-human CD117 antibody-mediated bone marrow niche clearance in nonhuman primates and humanized NSG mice. Blood. 2019 May 9;133(19):2104-2108. doi: 10.1182/blood-2018-06-853879. PMID: 30617195; PMCID: PMC6509543. 

  3. Czechowicz A, Palchaudhuri R, Scheck A, Hu Y, Hoggatt J, Saez B, Pang WW, Mansour MK, Tate TA, Chan YY, Walck E, Wernig G, Shizuru JA, Winau F, Scadden DT, Rossi DJ. Selective hematopoietic stem cell ablation using CD117-antibody-drug-conjugates enables safe and effective transplantation with immunity preservation. Nat Commun. 2019 Feb 6;10(1):617. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-08201-x. PMID: 30728354; PMCID: PMC6365495.