Katharine C. Hsu

Katharine Hsu is a leading authority on KIR (killer immunoglobulin-like receptor) biology and its clinical application in allogeneic bone marrow transplantation for leukemia. Her research demonstrated that KIR-HLA mismatches between donors and recipients can be harnessed to enhance alloreactive NK cell activity against residual leukemia cells. She has established algorithms for selecting donors based on KIR haplotypes to optimize anti-leukemia NK cell activity. Her work bridges fundamental immunology of NK cell self/non-self recognition with clinical outcomes in allogeneic transplantation.