T1D: Emerging Perspectives on Disease Pathogenesis, Prevention and Treatment

Our Panelists

Prof. Matthias Hebrok, Professor at the Diabetes Center at the University of California San Francisco

Matthias Hebrok is Hurlbut-Johnson Distinguished Professor in Diabetes Research at the Diabetes Center at the University of California San Francisco. He received his Diploma degree in Cell Biology from the Albert-Ludwigs University, performed his PhD thesis at the Max-Planck-Institute, and conducted his postdoctoral research at HHMI at Harvard University. His laboratory has made seminal contributions to our understanding of how embryonic signals control the fetal development of the pancreas and its insulin-producing beta cells. His recent work has implemented the information gained from these studies to generate functional beta cells from human stem cell populations for cell therapy purposes.

Prof. Matthias von Herrath, Vice President and Senior Medical Officer at Novo Nordisk

Matthias von Herrath holds a dual appointment as Vice President and Senior Medical Officer at Novo Nordisk and Professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology Center for Autoimmunity and Inflammation. He received his medical degree from the Freiburg Medical School in Germany and completed his residency work in the Internal Medicine/Immunology department at the Freiburg Medical Center. For his postdoctoral work, Dr. von Herrath went to The Scripps Research Institute and worked in its Neuropharmacology and Immunology departments. Matthias is committed to clinical translation of immune-based interventions in autoimmune and metabolic diseases. His expertise and main strength is working at the interface of experimental research to interpret and refine early phase I/II clinical trials in order to optimize strategies for phase 3 trials and drug approval.

Prof. Mark Peakman, Senior Director of Autoimmunity and Type 1 Diabetes research at Sanofi

Mark Peakman trained in medicine at University College London and pursued postgraduate training in clinical immunology. After his PhD on the immune system in type 1 diabetes he held a senior clinical research fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. He returned to the UK to oversee research at King’s College London in the Department of Immunobiology, focused on T lymphocytes in autoimmune disease. In 2019 Mark took a position as Senior Director of Autoimmunity and Type 1 Diabetes research at Sanofi, with the goal of designing and implementing strategies to bring disease modifying therapies to patients with autoimmunity.

Dr. Burcak Yesildag, Vice President – Diabetes Research at InSphero AG

Burcak Yesildag is the Vice President of the Diabetes Research at InSphero AG. She received her MSc degree in Biochemistry and PhD degree in Translation Biomedicine from ETHZ (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich). Her team at InSphero is strongly committed to the development of standardized, high throughput compatible and physiologically relevant assay systems and disease models for the study of type 1 and type 2 diabetes with primary or stem-cell derived human tissues. Her goal is to utilize these novel and robust models in collaborations with a broad scientific community around the world, in order to accelerate the clinical translation of novel discoveries and to contribute to the overall efficiency and reproducibility of the pancreatic islet research.