Bernhard J. Hering

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Bernhard J. Hering is professor of surgery and medicine and executive director of the Schulze Diabetes Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he serves as Vice Chair of Translational Medicine in the Medical School's Department of Surgery and where he holds the McKnight Presidential Chair in Transplantation Science and the Jeffrey Dobbs and David Sutherland, MD, PhD Chair in Diabetes Research. [1]

Contents

Biography

He received his medical degree in 1983 at Justus Liebig University Medical School, in Giessen, Germany, where he also did his residency in internal medicine, followed by training in endocrinology. He joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1996.

Academic work

Hering is an internationally renowned leader in the field of islet cell transplantation, with his research focusing on innovating and implementing cell-based therapeutics into specialty care biologics for diabetes. The human islet transplant protocol that Dr. Hering and his team have refined has markedly improved short-term and long-term clinical outcomes in patients with type 1 diabetes; [2] key elements of this protocol have been adopted for the Phase 3 licensure trial of human islets by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored multi-center Clinical Islet Transplant Consortium. [3]

For islet transplantation to become a premier treatment option for type 1 diabetes, a widely available cell source and a safe rejection prophylaxis are required. Hering's research group has addressed both requirements. Widely recognized as a pioneer in islet xenotransplantation, Hering and his team demonstrated that xenogeneic, porcine donor-derived islets can be utilized as a cell source for transplant in diabetes. His research group was the first to demonstrate long-term diabetes reversal after adult porcine islet xenotransplants in nonhuman primates, an accomplishment that has reinvigorated the field of xenotransplantation. [4] Hering co-founded Spring Point Project, an organization established to generate designated pathogen-free, ‘medical-grade’ source pigs for planned clinical translation of islet xenotransplantation. To eliminate the need for recipient immunosuppression, Hering has collaborated with Drs. Singh, Ramachandran, and Graham at the University of Minnesota and Drs. Luo and Miller at Northwestern University and others to develop the first strategy to induce reliably and safely stable immune tolerance of transplants in any stringent preclinical model that does not require same donor bone marrow transplantation with its intense conditioning regimen. [5] This strategy involves the peritransplant administration of apoptotic donor leukocytes under short-term immunosuppression and, unlike strategies that involve same donor bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, is consistently effective in nonhuman primates even without requiring irradiation, indiscriminate T cell depletion, myelosuppression, and calcineurin inhibition in transplant recipients, thereby pointing to a clinically applicable path toward immune tolerance of islet allografts and possibly also solid organ allografts. To extend these findings to induction of immune tolerance to porcine islet cell and organ xenografts, Hering is partnering with investigators with expertise in gene editing of porcine donors to integrate preemptive treatments with apoptotic donor leukocytes and genetic engineering of porcine donors into a safe and successful rejection prophylaxis for wide application in porcine to human xenotransplantation.

He has been invited to advise the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) on issues related to xenotransplantation and cellular therapies for diabetes. He has sat on the editorial boards of several professional journals and is the author or co-author of 25 book chapters and of over 300 articles, including articles in Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Hering has been a long-term member of the steering committees of the NIH Immune Tolerance Network, NIH Clinical Islet Transplant Consortium, NIH Nonhuman Primate Transplantation Tolerance Collaborative Study Group, and NIH Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet; he currently serves on the steering committee of the NIH Nonhuman Primate Transplantation Tolerance Collaborative Study Group. Hering is also the medical director of the NIH Collaborative Islet Transplant Registry (CITR). He served as president of the Cell Transplant Society, president of the International Xenotransplantation Association (IXA), and as president of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association (IPITA).

In recognition for his outstanding contributions to islet transplantation, Hering was named by U.S. News & World Report and Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. one of America's Top Doctors, a distinction reserved for the top 1% of physicians across the U.S. for their specialty. Additional honors include the Paul E. Lacy Memorial Lecture Award from The International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association in 2023, the most prestigious international recognition in the field of cell therapy for diabetes. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Organ transplantation</span> Medical procedure in which an organ is removed from one body and placed in the body of a recipient

Organ transplantation is a medical procedure in which an organ is removed from one body and placed in the body of a recipient, to replace a damaged or missing organ. The donor and recipient may be at the same location, or organs may be transported from a donor site to another location. Organs and/or tissues that are transplanted within the same person's body are called autografts. Transplants that are recently performed between two subjects of the same species are called allografts. Allografts can either be from a living or cadaveric source.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pancreatic islets</span> Regions of the pancreas

The pancreatic islets or islets of Langerhans are the regions of the pancreas that contain its endocrine (hormone-producing) cells, discovered in 1869 by German pathological anatomist Paul Langerhans. The pancreatic islets constitute 1–2% of the pancreas volume and receive 10–15% of its blood flow. The pancreatic islets are arranged in density routes throughout the human pancreas, and are important in the metabolism of glucose.

Anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG) is an infusion of horse or rabbit-derived antibodies against human T cells and their precursors (thymocytes), which is used in the prevention and treatment of acute rejection in organ transplantation and therapy of aplastic anemia due to bone marrow insufficiency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graft-versus-host disease</span> Medical condition

Graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) is a syndrome, characterized by inflammation in different organs. GvHD is commonly associated with bone marrow transplants and stem cell transplants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sertoli cell</span> Cells found in human testes which help produce sperm

Sertoli cells are a type of sustentacular "nurse" cell found in human testes which contribute to the process of spermatogenesis as a structural component of the seminiferous tubules. They are activated by follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) secreted by the adenohypophysis and express FSH receptor on their membranes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xenotransplantation</span> Transplantation of cells or tissue across species

Xenotransplantation or heterologous transplant is the transplantation of living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another. Such cells, tissues or organs are called xenografts or xenotransplants. It is contrasted with allotransplantation, syngeneic transplantation or isotransplantation and autotransplantation. Xenotransplantation is an artificial method of creating an animal-human chimera, that is, a human with a subset of animal cells. In contrast, an individual where each cell contains genetic material from a human and an animal is called a human–animal hybrid.

Allotransplant is the transplantation of cells, tissues, or organs to a recipient from a genetically non-identical donor of the same species. The transplant is called an allograft, allogeneic transplant, or homograft. Most human tissue and organ transplants are allografts.

Dr. A. M. James Shapiro is a British-Canadian surgeon best known for leading the clinical team that developed the Edmonton Protocol – an islet transplant procedure for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Dr. Shapiro is Professor of Surgery, Medicine, and Surgical Oncology at the University of Alberta and the Director of the Clinical Islet Transplant Program and the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program with Alberta Health Services.

The Edmonton protocol is a method of implantation of pancreatic islets for the treatment of type 1 diabetes mellitus, specifically "brittle" type 1 diabetics prone to hypoglycemic unawareness. The protocol is named for the islet transplantation group at the University of Alberta in the Canadian city of Edmonton, where the protocol was first devised in the late 1990s, and published in The New England Journal of Medicine in July 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islet cell transplantation</span> Transference of pancreatic islets

Islet transplantation is the transplantation of isolated islets from a donor pancreas into another person. It is a treatment for type 1 diabetes. Once transplanted, the islets begin to produce insulin, actively regulating the level of glucose in the blood.

Paul Eston Lacy was an anatomist and experimentalist and one of the world’s leading diabetes mellitus researchers. He is often credited as the originator of islet transplantation.

Mark A. Hardy is Auchincloss Professor of Surgery, Director Emeritus of the Transplant Centre, and Vice Chairman and Residency Program Director of the Department of Surgery at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insulitis</span> Medical condition

Insulitis is an inflammation of the islets of Langerhans, a collection of endocrine tissue located in the pancreas that helps regulate glucose levels, and is classified by specific targeting of immune cell infiltration in the islets of Langerhans. This immune cell infiltration can result in the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells of the islets, which plays a major role in the pathogenesis, the disease development, of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Insulitis is present in 19% of individuals with type 1 diabetes and 28% of individuals with type 2 diabetes. It is known that genetic and environmental factors contribute to insulitis initiation, however, the exact process that causes it is unknown. Insulitis is often studied using the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse model of type 1 diabetes. The chemokine family of proteins may play a key role in promoting leukocytic infiltration into the pancreas prior to pancreatic beta-cell destruction.

Transplantable organs and tissues may refer to both organs and tissues that are relatively often transplanted, as well as organs and tissues which are relatively seldom transplanted. In addition to this it may also refer to possible-transplants which are still in the experimental stage.

John Sarkis Najarian was an American transplant surgeon and clinical professor of transplant surgery at the University of Minnesota. Najarian was a pioneer in thoracic transplant surgery.

Short Course Immune Induction Therapy or SCIIT, is a therapeutic strategy employing rapid, specific, short term-modulation of the immune system using a therapeutic agent to induce T-cell non-responsiveness, also known as operational tolerance. As an alternative strategy to immunosuppression and antigen-specific tolerance inducing therapies, the primary goal of SCIIT is to re-establish or induce peripheral immune tolerance in the context of autoimmune disease and transplant rejection through the use of biological agents. In recent years, SCIIT has received increasing attention in clinical and research settings as an alternative to immunosuppressive drugs currently used in the clinic, drugs which put the patients at risk of developing infection, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

C. Garrison Fathman is a Professor of Medicine and Division Chief of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also the Associate Director of the Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection and Director of the Center for Clinical Immunology at Stanford University. He was Founder and first-President of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies. As Director of the CCIS, Dr. Fathman initiated a multidisciplinary approach to study and treat autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, and initiated several new approaches to education and community outreach.

Bernd Schröppel is a German former transplant nephrologist at the Mount Sinai Medical Center and the former medical director of the kidney pancreas transplant program at the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. He is also a former assistant professor of nephrology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Seong Hoe Park is a Korean immunologist and pathologist and a distinguished professor of pathology at the Seoul National University College of Medicine. He served as the chair of the Department of Pathology (2000–2004), the chair of the Graduate Program of Immunology (2002–2006), the president of Center for Animal Resource Development (2004–2006) at Seoul National University. He was the president of the Korean Association of Immunologists (2000–2001). Throughout his career as a T cell immunologist, Park established the theory of T cell-T cell interaction in human thymus, in which T cells expressing MHC class II drive previously unrecognized types of T cells and provide another significant developmental mechanism of T cells.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Reemtsma</span> American surgeon

Keith Reemtsma was an American transplant surgeon, best known for the cross-species kidney transplantation operation from chimpanzee to human in 1964. With only the early immunosuppressants and no long-term dialysis, the female recipient survived nine months, long enough to return to work.

References

  1. ↑ "Faculty". 14 May 2019.
  2. ↑ [Journal of the American Medical Association 2005; 293 (7): 830-5]
  3. ↑ [Diabetes Care 2016; 39: 1230-40]
  4. ↑ [Nature Medicine 2006; 12 (3): 301-3]
  5. ↑ [Nature Communications 2019; 10:3495]
  6. ↑ "IPITA Paul Lacy Memorial Lecture".
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