Prof. Caterina Minniti
Dr. Minniti is a Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Formerly, she was the Director of the Sickle Cell Center for Adults at Montefiore Medical Center, and the Director of the Red Cell Disorder Center at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC. Dr. Minniti is a clinical trial specialist and a translational researcher who believes that the best way to provide care for SCD patients is a continuum, from birth to adulthood. She has participated in many of the trials that have led to the approval of current therapeutic options, from transfusions for stroke prevention to Hydroxyurea for infants, to most recently, the use of Voxelotor in SCD.
The focus of her research is on understanding mechanisms that lead to end-organ damage in order to identify early biomarkers and targeted therapies. Her interests have spanned from stroke to pulmonary hypertension, and most recently, she has focused on leg ulcers as they represent a window into the vasculopathy in SCD. She aims to develop pathogenetically based therapeutic approaches for preventing and treating SCD-related end-organ damage. Before moving to New York, she was a member of the Hematology Branch of the National Institute of Heart, Blood and Lung, where she developed a topical treatment for chronic leg ulcers in SCD. Her contributions have been recognized by the American Society of Hematology, as an invited member of the Sickle Cell Disease Clinical Endpoints Workshop in 2019 and 2020, and a member of MARAC, the medical advisory committee of SCDAA. Dr Minniti is internationally known and is part of the Global Sickle Cell Alliance. Dr Minniti has received recognition from her peers, as Scientific Chair of the 2019 Foundation for Sickle Cell Disease Symposium, and from patients’ organizations, as recipient of the Sickle Cell Thalassemia Patient Network of New York “Distinguished Service Award” in 2018. She is an editor of the American Journal of Hematology, the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, and several book chapters.
