David McKenna, M.D., Scientific and Medical Director

David H. McKenna, M.D. received a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame and an M.D. from Saint Louis University School of Medicine.  Dr. McKenna received his post-graduate training at the University of Minnesota (residency, lab medicine and pathology; fellowship, transfusion medicine, with emphasis on cellular therapy) and is board-certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology as well as Transfusion Medicine. 

In addition to being Scientific and Medical Director of MCT, he is Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology in the University of Minnesota Medical School and Medical Director of the Clinical Cell Therapy Laboratory of the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview. He is actively involved with the National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute (NHLBI)-sponsored PACT (Production Assistance for Cellular Therapy) group, as the University of Minnesota has been designated a national somatic cell processing site.  Dr. McKenna is a member of AABB serving as the Chair of their Cellular Therapies Committee, the International Society for Cellular Therapy, the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and the American Society of Hematology.  He also serves as the Chair of Cell Processing for the NHLBI-sponsored Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network, and he is a Scientific Member of the Biomedical Excellence for Safer Transfusion (BEST) Cellular Therapy Team. 

His interests include umbilical cord blood research, quality assurance/quality control in cellular therapy, and translational research/clinical scale-up of biotherapeutics.