Alloway Named to American Society of Transplantation Board

CINCINNATI—University of Cincinnati (UC) research professor of medicine Rita Alloway, PharmD, has been elected to the board of directors of the American Society of Transplantation, an international organization of transplant professionals.

The American Society of Transplantation (AST) includes more than 3,100 transplant physicians, surgeons, scientists and allied health professionals. Its aim is to advance the field of transplantation and improve patient care by promoting research, education, advocacy and organ donation. AST board members are elected to three-year terms of office by the society’s membership. 

Alloway, who directs UC’s Transplant Clinical Research Program, is an internationally recognized expert on generic immunosuppressive drug development and FDA approval standards. 

Her research interests have focused on immunosuppressive drug development, pharmacotherapy and pharmacokinetics. She currently directs several industry-sponsored and investigator-initiated drug trials serving as principal and collaborating investigator. 

"The success of transplantation has long been linked to the functionality of a multidisciplinary team and the advancement of transplantation via clinical research,” says Alloway. "I look forward to representing these key interests within AST leadership over the next three years by providing a new and different perspective to the AST Board.” 

Alloway has a history of service to AST. She was integral to the formation of the society’s Transplant Pharmacy Community of Practice and currently serves as its chair. She is a current member of the AST Public Policy Committee and the AST Awards and Nominating Committee.

She has represented AST in attendance and public comment at generic consensus conferences by the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Advisory Committee for Pharmaceutical Sciences and Clinical Pharmacology. Alloway also represented the AST as an organizing committee member and speaker for the FDA Workshop on Issues in the Development of Medical Products for Delayed Graft Function and as an organizing committee member at the FDA Workshop on Clinical Trial Endpoints in Kidney Transplantation.

In her own research, Alloway has published over 150 scientific papers and 250 abstracts in transplantation. She has given over 125 invited lectures and 15 research presentations at scientific meetings with over 70 additional presentations at scientific meetings by trainees. 

Alloway received her doctor of pharmacy degree from the University of Tennessee (UT) before completing a pharmacy practice residency at the VA Medical Center in Memphis. She served 10 years as director of clinical pharmacy services at UT Bowld Hospital and, from 1997-2000, served as director of UT’s Transplant Clinical Pharmacotherapy Research Institute.

While at UT, Alloway established a transplantation pharmacy specialty residency and a clinical research focused-fellowship. These two postgraduate training programs have trained over 25 PharmD residents and fellows over 18 years. Her residents and fellows have won 14 Young Investigator Awards at the American Transplant Congress over the past 10 years.

In 2007 she was an elected Fellow of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy and recognized locally as a "Leading Woman of Cincinnati in Research and Technology.”

AST introduced its newly elected 2012-2013 board members at the recent American Transplant Congress meeting, held June 2-6 in Boston.