Donald Branch

Dr. Donald R. Branch is a certified medical laboratory scientist with a specialist in blood banking who obtained BSc degrees in Chemistry and Cell and Molecular Biology, has a PhD in Immunology from the University of Alberta and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Immunology at the University of Toronto. He discovered mixed hematopoietic chimerism following marrow ablative bone marrow transplant, was the inventor of  a reagent for use in transfusion services to investigate underlying clinically significant alloantibodies in patients having direct antiglobulin test-positive autoimmune hemolytic anemia, and was a pioneer in the development and use of the monocyte-macrophage assay in transfusion medicine. He has published more than 250 research papers and received numerous awards of distinction for his work in transfusion and transplantation medicine. Dr. Branch is currently a Professor in both Medicine and Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto, and a Senior Scientist at Canadian Blood Services.

Research areas

• red blood cell biology and hemolysis
• autoimmune diseases phagocytosis
• red blood cell allo- and autoantibodies
• immunotherapy
• infectious diseases (HIV, Ebola, Coronaviruses)

Other appointments

• Member, AABB Awards Committee for the Tibor Greenwalt Memorial Award and Lectureship, 2024.
• Member, AABB Awards Committee for the Sally Frank Memorial Award and Lectureship, 2024.
• Consultant for QuidelOrtho company, 2024.
• Member, editorial board, Annals in Blood, 2020.
• Member, editorial board, Transfusion, 2010.
• Founder and Director, Comprehensive Research Experience for Medical Students (CREMS) Programs, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 2005–2015 (retired) 

Awards

• Nominated for the International Society for Blood Transfusion President’s Award, 2025
• Nominated for the Bernard Fantus Lifetime Achievement Medal,
  Association for the Advancement of Blood and Blood Biotherapeutics, 2024
• Dale A. Smith Memorial Award,
  Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapeutics, 2022
• Tibor Greenwalt Memorial Award and Lectureship, American Association of Blood Banks, 2019
• Sally Frank Memorial Award and Lectureship, American Association of Blood Banks, 2014
• Helen I. Battle Lectureship, Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario.
  Lecture title: “The Changing Paradigm of HIV Pathogenesis, 2007
• Morten Grove-Rasmussen Memorial Award, American Association of Blood Banks, 2003
• Ortho Award in Transfusion Medicine, Canadian Society for Transfusion Medicine, 2003
• American Society of Hematology, Recognized for Distinction, for significant contributions, 2001

Research interests

Dr. Donald R. Branch’s research interests include development of in vitro assays for phagocytosis, including using the monocyte-macrophage assay to determine optimal donor blood for transfusion into patients having potentially clinically significant auto- or alloantibodies, development of a small molecule (drug) approach to blocking phagocytosis for use in all immune cytopenias, role of antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) in transfusion medicine, examining the role of macrophage-mediated removal of red blood cells in sickle cell disease, developing a surrogate coronavirus assay that can be used in a containment level 2 environment for the study of SARS-CoV-2, and investigating a role for ABO isoagglutinins in the inhibition of COVID viruses.