Vitalant Foundation Establishes Fund Honoring Michael P. Busch

The Vitalant Foundation has established the Dr. Michael P. Busch First Response Fund to honor Michael P. Busch, MD, PhD, one of the world’s leading experts in blood safety and transfusion-transmission disease research. The fund will provide the Vitalant Research Institute (VRI) with annual support for rapid-response pilot projects, advance scientific priorities, support trainees and collaborators, and lay the groundwork for larger studies funded by national and international partners.

Busch is director emeritus of the VRI, vice president for research and scientific programs at Vitalant, and a professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Throughout his career, he led the development of universal HIV and West Nile virus screening for blood donations and was a founding leader of the Recipient Epidemiology and Donor Evaluation Study (REDS) Program, which aims to evaluate and improve the safety and availability of the blood supply and transfusions.

A longtime leader in the blood community, Busch has received numerous accolades from AABB for his work to advance blood banking and transfusion medicine: the Tibor Greenwalt Memorial Award (1998), the Emily Cooley Memorial Award (2005) and the Landsteiner-Alter Award (2024). In addition, Busch is an inaugural member of the AABB Foundation Hall of Fame, which recognizes AABB Foundation grant recipients who leveraged early-career grant funding into successful careers in transfusion medicine and biotherapies.