Sarah Kogan Nicholas, MD

Sarah K Nicholas, MD is an assistant professor of pediatrics and Allergy and Immunology clinic chief at Baylor College of Medicine / Texas Children’s Hospital. She graduated from the University of Rochester with a BA in Biology and received her medical degree from George Washington University. She completed her Pediatrics residency and Allergy and Immunology fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine.

She is the founder and director of the Solid Organ Transplant Immunology Program, a one of a kind comprehensive immunology service to address the immune concerns around solid organ transplantation . Specifically, she is engaged in pretransplant immune evaluations to expand donor options through desensitization and ABO-incompatible transplant protocols. She also diagnoses and treats post-transplant immunodefiency and rejection. In addition, she specializes in treating patients with inherited and acquired immune system disorders including inborn errors of immunity and post-organ transplant and post-biologic administration immune deficiency.

Her research concentration surrounds antibody function in solid organ transplant. In particular, she focuses on the effects of post-transplant hypogammaglobulinemia and strategic use of IgG replacement therapy to mitigate complications, the safety, efficacy, and facilitation of ABO-incompatible transplants, and the impact of positive crossmatch on outcomes in heart transplant recipients.

Through her involvement in the Texas state newborn screening program for Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), Dr Nicholas has diagnosed and treated many patients with this disease. She has worked with the Texas children’s Hospital Center for Gene and Cell Therapy to push cutting-edge science in the treatment of SCID forward by helping to develop protocols to utilize novel therapies including adoptive anti-viral T cell therapies for primary immunodeficiency patients with severe viral illness. These advanced treatments provide a life-saving option to patients who would otherwise not survive their viral infections prior to bone marrow transplant. Texas Children’s Hospital bone marrow transplant unit transplants 15-20 SCID patients per year with hematopoietic stem cells from bone marrow, peripheral blood, and cord blood with a survival rate of 100% for matched transplants and 70-85% survival rate for other donor transplants.

Dr Nicholas is active member of the Immunogenetics program where she and the team work towards the discovery of novel immunodeficiency genes to include the Houston project, an initiative to understand immune system diseases through identification of genetic causes. To futher support novel disease discovery, she serves as the immunologist for the Undiagnosed Disease Network (UDN) Baylor site.

Education

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