Dr. Robert Montgomery Receives 2024 Jacobson Innovation Award

Robert A. Montgomery, MD, DPhil, FACS, a pioneer in transplant surgery, is the recipient of the 2024 ACS Jacobson Innovation Award. Dr. Montgomery, chair of the Department of Surgery at NYU Langone Health, H. Leon Pachter, MD, Professor of Surgery in the Department of Surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, all in New York, New York, was presented with the honor in Chicago, Illinois.

Through this international surgical award, the ACS recognizes living surgeons who have initiated a new development or technique in any surgical discipline. It was established with a gift from Julius H. Jacobson II, MD, FACS, a vascular surgeon known for his innovations in microsurgery, and his wife, Joan.

Dr. Montgomery received the award in its 30th year, joining a cohort that includes Francis DeBois, MD, who revolutionized the treatment of gallbladder disease with a mini-laparotomy for cholecystectomy; transplantation pioneer Thomas Starzl, MD, FACS; and M. Judah Folkman, MD, FACS, who founded the field of angiogenesis and developed angiogenesis inhibitors.

“The College is the thing that connects all of us together,” Dr. Montgomery said. “So, to be recognized by this gigantic community—which includes so many luminaries—is a really big deal.”

Career Highlights

For more than 20 years at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Dr. Montgomery helped develop numerous improvements to transplantation, including laparoscopic live-donor nephrectomy, long-distance live-donor shipping of kidneys, and desensitization and paired-donation modalities, which his team then used to transplant more than 700 patients.

Dr. Montgomery led teams that completed the first 3-way paired donation and the first 2-way, 3-way, 4-way, 5-way, 6-way, and 8-way domino paired donations. He also co-led the first 10-way open chain kidney donations and performed the first chain of transplants started by an altruistic donor.

In 2016, he moved to NYU Langone Health, taking the helm of a surgical department of 175 faculty and 300 staff members across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island. He has vastly expanded transplant services at the medical center and led the creation of new lung and heart transplant programs and pediatric kidney, heart, lung, and liver programs, as well as an expansion of the allogeneic bone marrow transplant program.

Dr. Montgomery and his team also have completed the first and second successful pig-to-human kidney xenotransplants, in September and November 2021; two gene-edited, pig-to-human heart transplants in decedents in 2022; and the longest functioning pig-to-human kidney xenotransplant to date in 2023.

Throughout his career, his innovations in caring for patients with complications have included the creation of a dedicated incompatible transplant program and some of the first successful transplants in patients with catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome. He is considered a world expert on kidney transplantation for patients who are highly sensitized or ABO incompatible, and he receives patients with highly complex cases who are referred to him from around the globe.

Dr. Montgomery completed his medical degree at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York, and a doctorate in molecular immunology at the University of Oxford in England. His surgical training (including as an intern, resident, chief resident, and fellow in transplant surgery) was at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He also was a postdoctoral fellow in human molecular genetics at Johns Hopkins University.

An ACS Fellow since 2003, Dr. Montgomery is a past ACS Scholar and a past recipient of the ACS Faculty Fellowship and the ACS George H. A. Clowes Jr., MD, FACS, Memorial Research Career Development Award.

Advice for Young Surgeon-Scientists

Asked how he would advise the next generation of surgeon-scientists, Dr. Montgomery noted that some success comes down to “being at the right place at the right time with the right mentors, the people who inspire you and invest in you.”

However, he noted that success often hinges on persistence: “I think the trick is to just really be prepared. There's nothing that replaces hard work. There's nothing that replaces resilience and failing and picking yourself up and never giving in to the voices inside your head that tell you that you're never going to achieve what you want to achieve. You have to put in that time and that effort and do the work.”

In addition, he said innovation is often linked to resisting the status quo: “You have to immerse yourself in whatever field you choose so that you really understand what the unmet needs are. What are the things that, if you could come up with a new approach or a new idea, would make a big difference?”

He connected that kind of scientific insight back to clinical care. “I learn from my patients. I think that's another secret,” he said. “If you're not doing that, I think you're not going to be that well-informed to be able to translate new ideas into patient care. A lot of those ideas come from your contact with individual patients.”

Ongoing Breakthroughs

The patient story he may have received his boldest insights from, however, is his own. Affected by genetic cardiomyopathy, Dr. Montgomery received the first implantable cardiac defibrillator given to a practicing surgeon in 1989. In 2018—after receiving a heart transplant at NYU Langone Health and recognizing that his survival depended on a donor’s death—he was motivated to make xenotransplantation a clinical reality for others.

 While the Jacobson Innovation Award recognizes lifetime achievement, Dr. Montgomery’s work in surgical innovation is not yet complete. This year, he added to his stream of xenotransplantation breakthroughs by providing the sixth xenotransplant at NYU Langone Health to a woman whose severe disease necessitated both a pig kidney and heart pump. He anticipates moving xenotransplantation to phase I and phase II clinical trials in 2025. He also predicted that within 10 years, after further clinical trials, xenotransplantation “will be commonplace.”