Dr. Kitko joined the Vanderbilt Pediatric Hematology/Oncology program as the Medical Director of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant in June 2015. She had previously worked at the University of Michigan, initially as a clinical fellow in 2003, and then was appointed to a Lecturer position in 2006 and promoted to Assistant Professor in 2009. During her time at Michigan, she developed a clinical and translational research focus in graft-versus-host disease. She has been a key collaborator on GVHD biomarker studies conducted within the overarching GVHD research theme of the Michigan BMT Program, including a first-authored paper demonstrating that elevations of CXCL9 are associated with new onset de novo chronic GVHD. Following additional training in BMT clinical research design and practice through her participation in the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Research Training Course in 2007, she concentrated her research focus on chronic GVHD diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. She oversaw the development of a chronic GVHD clinical outcomes database and research sample repository as part of the BMT Program database. This project includes detailed chronic GVHD data as well as multiple clinical samples in more than 1000 patients and collection of standardized data using NIH consensus chronic GVHD staging, training of data managers, and supervision of research sample acquisition.  Dr. Kitko has served on the End Point Response Committee for the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network national randomized phase III clinical trial for treatment of chronic GVHD.  She served a 5 year term as Co-Chair of the Pediatric Cancer Working Committee of the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR). In this role, she led international clinical outcomes research studies of pediatric recipients of BMT.  She was recently elected for a 5 year term for the CIBMTR GVHD Committee, as well as a member of the Bone Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network Clinical Trials Advisory Committee. She served first as Vice Chair of the GVHD Strategy Group for the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Consortium, and is now the chair of this committee.  Dr. Kitko serves as the lead Vanderbilt investigator for the Mount Sinai Acute GVHD Consortium (MAGIC).  Through MAGIC, our patients have access to innovated prevention and treatment trials for GVHD.

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