Abba Zubair's Biography

Abba Zubair, Medical Director Transfusion Medicine and Stem Cell Therapy, Mayo Clinic

Dr. Abba C. Zubair is an Associate Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Medical Director, Transfusion Medicine and Stem Cell Therapy.

Dr. Zubair obtained his medical degree from ABU, Zaria, Nigeria and his Ph.D. in Tumor Immunology from University of Sheffield, England. He obtained Master’s degree in clinical trials and principles of drug development from Harvard University, Boston Massachusetts. He completed a residency in pathology and laboratory medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Pennsylvania and a clinical fellowship in transfusion medicine at Brigham and Women Hospital and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Dr. Zubair seeks to identify and characterize normal and cancer stem cells. His research focuses on the application of stem cell therapy in regenerative medicine. He is the co-principal investigator and the sponsor of the 2 INDs that investigates the safety and feasibility of using mesenchymal stem cells to treat patients with intracerebral hemorrhage and lung rejection after transplant. He received an award from NASA (CASIS) that allowed him to use the microgravity environment to assess the feasibility of growing stem cells that are of sufficient quality and quantity to be use in the treatment of patients with stroke, which is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The results may also have downstream applications in broad tissue engineering/regenerative medicine. Dr. Zubair also studies cancer stem cells to have better insight into the mechanism of cancer stem cell resistance to chemotherapy and might therefore lead to identification of new therapeutic targets, more effective anti-cancer therapies and chemoprevention.