Ron directs the newly established center for research and innovation, the Institute for Bioengineering and Biotechnology, which is based in Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital. The Institute is the most recent evolution of a clinical and research program in burn and trauma that began in the 1970s. The collaborative track record and expertise in the Institute has secured more than $200 million in federal, foundation, and industrial support for basic and clinical research programs. Ron serves as the principal investigator of the first-in-the-nation P50 award (P50-GM21700 in 1974) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and its associated NIGMS T32 Burn Research Training Grant (T32-GM07035 in 1975) for postdoctoral training in burn and trauma research. Ron’s research as the principal investigator of the “Inflammation and the Host Response to Injury” program (U54-GM062119) – the largest award ever received by MGH and 10^th largest of the extramural NIH grants – has developed the clinical infrastructure to study critically ill trauma populations, as well as the technological and bioinformatics skills to isolate leukocyte populations and probe the transcriptome as it responds to severe injury.   The development of clinical treatment protocols by consensus of the trauma and burn centers participating in this “Glue Grant” program led to improvements in survival, reduction in morbidity for injured patients, and established benchmarks for care in the fields of burns and trauma.

Innovations developed within the Division have found many applications, including detection of trisomy within the first trimester of pregnancy to replace amniocentesis, capture of circulating tumor cells to diagnose and treat cancer, and suggest subsequent treatments; and count of CD4+ cells in the blood at points of care such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia to enable rationale treatment with antiviral drugs.

Ron graduated from Tulane University School of Medicine and received training in general surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital. During his surgical training, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology earning SM and ScD degrees in chemical engineering. He returned to the MGH and completed his surgical residency in 1986 where he has continued on the staff of the MGH Surgical Services. Ron has published more than 450 research papers in medicine and engineering journals and has contributed to the advancement of science and engineering through service on institutional advisory panels, moderating mini-symposia and workshops on biotechnology, and studying the genomics and proteomics of immunology and metabolism resulting from injury. Ron is a member of many national and international professional committees, and serves on the editorial board of many scientific journals.  In 1998, he was selected to become a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Representative Publications

Seok J, Warren HS, Cuenca AG, Mindrinos MN, Baker HV, Xu W, et al. Genomic responses in mouse models poorly mimic human inflammatory diseases.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Feb; 110 (9):3507-12. PubMed PMID: 23401516; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3587220

Xiao W, Mindrinos MN, Seok J, Cuschieri J, Cuenca AG, Gao H, et al. A genomic storm in critically injured humans. J Exp Med. 2011 Dec; 208(13):2581-90. PubMed PMID: 22110166; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3244029

Xu W, Seok J, Mindrinos MN, Schweitzer AC, Jiang H, Wilhelmy J, et al. Human transcriptome array for high-throughput clinical studies. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Mar; 108(9):3707-12. PubMed PMID: 21317363; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3048146

Kotz KT, Xiao W, Miller-Graziano C, Qian WJ, Russom A, Warner EA, et al. Clinical microfluidics for neutrophil genomics and proteomics. Nature Medicine. 2010 Sep; 16(9):1042-7. PubMed PMID: 20802500; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3136804

Zhou B, Xu W, Herndon D, Tompkins R, Davis R, Xiao W, et al. Analysis of factorial time course microarrays with application to a clinical study of burn injury. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Jun; 107(22):9923-8. PubMed PMID: 20479259; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2890487

Stott SL, Lee RJ, Nagrath S, Yu M, Miyamoto DT, Ulkus L, et al.  Isolation and characterization of circulating tumor cells from localized and metastatic prostate cancer patients. Sci Transl Med. 2010 Mar; 2(25):25ra23. PubMed PMID: 20424012; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3141292

Information

Ronald G. Tompkins, M.D., Sc.D.
Massachusetts General Hospital
55 Fruit Street, GRB 1302
Boston, MA  02114

View Ron’s Harvard Catalyst profile

Visit the Glue Grant Program website