Dr. Colvin was born in Columbus Ohio and raised in Henderson, Kentucky. He
graduated from MIT in 1964 (majoring in Literature) and from Harvard Medical School in
1968 cum laude. He completed an internship in surgery and a residency in pathology at
Massachusetts General Hospital under Dr. Benjamin Castleman in 1972.
While a house officer in Pathology at MGH, Dr. Colvin became interested in renal and
transplant pathology with Drs. Vivian Pinn and Martin Flax, and became the “resident”
expert in this area when they left for Tufts in 1970. Dr. Paul Russell, a distinguished
surgeon who established the MGH Transplant Service was a mentor and long time
friend in this field. From 1971-2, Dr. Colvin was an NIH Research Fellow under the
mentorship of Dr. Harold Dvorak, working on the role of the clotting system in T cell
mediated immune reactions. Together they showed that the induration that defines a
positive delayed type hypersensitivity reaction is due to fibrin deposition in the tissue.
In 1972, he entered the US Army as a Major in the Medical Corps, assigned to the
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, where he continued studies in
immunopathology, collaborating with colleagues at the NIH and AFIP. In 1975 he
returned to MGH as an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School,
rising be the Benjamin Castleman Professor of Pathology and served as Pathologist-inChief at MGH from 1991 to 2005. During his tenure, the department initiated full
pathology subspecialty practice, now modeled by other academic centers, expanded the
staff by 33% and the residents by 25%, recruited 53 faculty members, tripled the
research funding and doubled the research space, created molecular pathology
diagnostic lab and an endowed professorship.
Dr. Colvin’s primary area is the immunopathology of renal disease, particularly
mechanisms of graft acceptance and rejection. His current interest is in humoral
rejection, tolerance, xenotransplantation, mechanisms of chronic graft injury and in vivo
imaging of graft infiltrating cells. Among Dr. Colvin’s notable research contributions are
identification of the diagnostic criteria for acute antibody mediated rejection and the
discovery of chronic antibody mediated rejection, using peritubular capillary deposition of
the complement fragment, C4d, as a key marker. Chronic antibody mediated rejection is
the major cause of late renal allograft loss. His criteria have been accepted by the Banff
schema and have become incorporated into standard clinical practice. Dr. Colvin was
one of the initial authors on the Banff classification in 1993, and continues as a leader of
this biannual international meeting that promotes scientific progress and standardization
of practice. Dr. Colvin elucidated the mechanisms of chronic vascular rejection using an
experimental system with mouse heart transplants. In these studies, with Dr. Paul
Russell, they have shown that antibody is sufficient to initiate chronic vascular rejection,
without a necessary participation of T cells. The process does not require complement
fixation, but does depend on NK cells, via Fc receptors.
Dr. Colvin was a key member of the team that tried the first therapeutic monoclonal
antibody, OKT3, in a patient who developed acute renal allograft rejection on October
20, 1980. The team gathered around the prototype flow cytometer operated by Dr.
Colvin the evening after the first dose, and observed that all the T cells had disappeared
from the circulation within an hour of treatment. Someone in the room quoted Dr.
Warren, and said “Gentlemen, this is no humbug.” More recently Dr. Colvin has
collaborated on a series of preclinical trials of induction of tolerance to kidney allografts
by combined donor bone marrow transplantation. After these trials showed promise, a
pilot clinical trial was performed and reported in the NEJM in 2008.
Dr. Colvin has held NIH grants since 1975, receiving a MERIT award in 1987, and at age
68 obtained an R01 grant for his work on mechanisms and in vivo imaging of mouse
kidney graft acceptance and rejection. He has trained over 40 research and clinical
fellows, many of whom have become medical leaders themselves. He has authored
more than 400 papers and edited or co-authored 5 books, including Diagnostic
Immunopathology and the soon to be released Diagnostic Pathology: Kidney Diseases.
Dr. Colvin has been an active and popular teacher of medical students and residents.
He played a leadership role in the “New Pathway” at Harvard Medical School, initiated in
1984 by Dean Tosteson, the goals of which were to promote problem solving via case
based tutorial, and integrating across disciplines. Dr. Colvin designed and led a major
course “Identity, Microbes and Defense”, a 12 week course that combined general
pathology, immunology and microbiology for the first year students. Dr. Colvin also
served as the Master of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Society from 1990-1992.
Dr. Colvin is a member of many scientific boards, committees and professional societies,
including the International Academy of Pathology, the American Society for Investigative
Pathology, American Association of Immunologists, American Society of Nephrology, The
Transplantation Society, Massachusetts Medical Society, College of American Pathology
(Fellow), American Society of Clinical Pathology, the Association of Pathology Chairs and is on
the Board of Trustees of the Roche Organ Transplant Research Foundation. He has served as
president of the Renal Pathology Society and the New England Society of Pathologists and
chaired numerous scientific symposia. Among his awards and honors are election to Alpha
Omega Alpha, Association of Academic Pathologists (Pluto Club), and Fellow, American
Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the Jacob Churg Award from the
Renal Pathology Society and the Paul Terasaki Award from the American Society of
Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics.