Director, Serologic Immunology
Director & Program Director,
TMS Blood Banking Fellowship
Baystate Medical Center
Chester Andrzejewski, Jr., PhD, MD is Medical Director of System Transfusion Medicine/Blood Banking Services at Baystate Health in Springfield, MA. He received his undergraduate education at Brown University and a PhD in Immunology from Tufts University where he created and studied the first monoclonal anti-DNA hybridomas and anti-idiotypes to them.
After receiving his M.D. from the Tufts University School of Medicine he performed his post-graduate residency medical training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Clinical Pathology along with fellowship training in Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine. During this time he was awarded a National Blood Foundation grant for studies examining the diversity of RBC autoantibody repertoires in patients with autoinnmune hemolytic anemia and showed the occurrence of both polyclonal and restricted RBC autoantibody populations as assessed by their isoelectric point characteristics.
He is a Fellow in the College of American Pathologists and holds board certifications in both Clinical Pathology and Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine. A veteran of both Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Dr. Andrzejewski served as Medical Director of the Transfusion Medicine Service and Blood Donor Center at Wilford Hall U.S.A.F. Medical Center, Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas and as Medical Director of the Transfusion Medicine Service/Blood Bank at the 870th U.S.A.F. Contingency Hospital, R.A.F. Little Rissington, U.K. the main and largest military contingency hospital deployed during the first Persian Gulf War.
In addition to his Blood Bank duties at Baystate Health, he is the Medical Director of the Diagnostic Immunology Laboratory and the Program Director for the ACGME accredited Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine Fellowship at Baystate Medical Center. An Assistant Professor of Pathology at the Tufts University School of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he has authored or co-authored numerous abstracts, papers and book chapters on a variety of transfusion medicine and immunology topics and has been the recipient of several grants related to these disciplines.
A National Blood Foundation Scholar, he has been involved with various committees for local, regional and national professional organizations including the AABB and the American Society for Apheresis (ASFA) serving as President for the latter organization in 2006-07. A reviewer for several journals, he is an associate editor for the Journal of Clinical Apheresis. Since 1998 he has been the Chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee for the American Red Cross New England Region.
He is a recipient of a Massachusetts Lupus Foundation Research Fellowship Award, a Meritorious Service Medal from the United States Air Force and several Academic Excellence Achievement Awards from the Baystate Medical Education and Research Foundation. In 2005 he received the "Charles C. Lund Award" from the American Red Cross/Blood Services-New England Region given in recognition "to a physician or scientist who has made an outstanding contribution, either in research or in practice, to the delivery of new or improved blood transfusion services."
His research and clinical interests include immune repertoire diversity and how it relates to health and disease, the diagnosis and management of suspected adverse transfusion reactions, stem-cell transplantation, biovigilance and blood transfusion safety, and Apheresis Medicine quality improvement.