Helmholtz Munich

Director, Institute for Diabetes and Organoid Technology (IDOT) and Professor and Chair for Applied Stem Cell and Organoid Systems, School of Medicine, Technical University Munich (TUM)

+49 89 3187 43646 Email meBuilding/Room: 3620/ 315b

“It is our goal at the IDOT to play a pioneering role in integrating stem cell and organoid technology with bioengineering and bioinformatics tools to identify new avenues for diabetes and pancreatic cancer therapies.”

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Academic Career and Research Areas

Matthias Hebrok performed his PhD research in developmental biology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Immunobiology in Freiburg and trained as a postdoctoral scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. He was Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (USA) until August 2022, where he held the Hurlbut-Johnson Distinguished Professorship in Diabetes Research and was director of the Diabetes Center from 2010-2020. Since 2019 he holds an Honorary Professorship at the Technical University Dresden. In 2023, he was awarded a prestigious Bavarian Distinguished Professorship.

Matthias joined Helmholtz Munich in September 2022 as director of the newly founded Institute for Diabetes and Organoid Technology. He was also appointed as professor to the Technical University Munich where he holds the Chair for Applied Stem Cell and Organoid Systems and is the director of the new Center for Organoid Systems.

Coming from a background of developmental biology, he started out deciphering the mechanisms underlying normal pancreas organogenesis. His early work profoundly contributed to delineating the imperative role of embryonic signaling pathways during pancreas development, organ function and disease-related processes. He continues to explore the role of cellular fate determinants such as epigenetic and transcriptional regulators in maintaining healthy, fully differentiated cells of the exocrine and endocrine pancreas.

His more recent work has focused on defining how deregulation of cellular activities contribute to pancreatic diseases, such as diabetes and pancreatic cancer, and how these can be modeled using stem cell biology approaches. With his group he helped pioneer the generation of functional beta-like cells from human pluripotent stem cells as a potential source for cell replacement therapy for diabetes. How stem cell derived islet clusters can be functionally optimized and protected after transplantation is an ongoing research focus of his lab. He is further interested in exploiting human stem cell based organoid technologies for pancreas cancer modeling to uncover novel aspects of disease development and avenues for therapeutic intervention.

Fields of Work and Expertise

Pancreas developmentDiabetesPancreatic cancerHuman stem cells β cellsCell therapy OrganoidsCellular stress Genetic engineering Immunomodulation Epigenetics

"Science must embrace invention, explore new avenues, test the unknown."

Professional Career

Since 2022

Director, Institute for Diabetes and Organoid Technology, Helmholtz Center Munich

Since 2022

Director, Center for Organoid Systems, Technical University Munich (TUM)

Since 2022

Professor and Chair for Applied Stem Cell and Organoid Systems, Technical University Munich (TUM)

2009-2022

Professor, Diabetes Center, Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco (UCSF)

2010-2020

Director, Diabetes Center, University of California San Francisco (UCSF)

2005-2009

Associate Professor, Diabetes Center, Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco (UCSF)

1999-2005

Assistant Professor, Diabetes Center, Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco (UCSF)

1996-1999

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Dept. of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University

Honors and Awards

2023 - Bavarian Distinguished Professorship
2009-2022 - Hurlbut-Johnson Distinguished Professorship in Diabetes Research
2020 - JDRF Greater Bay Area Chapter Innovation Award
Since 2019 - Honorary Professor, Technical University Dresden, Germany
2015 - Gerold & Kayla Grodsky Award, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
2013-2015 - Chair, NIH Study section, Cellular Aspects of Diabetes and Obesity (CADO)
2006 - Scholar Award, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
2000 - Career Development Award, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation
2000 - Sandler Award in Basic Sciences
1999 - Sandler Program in Basic Sciences Junior Faculty Start-up Award

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Google Scholar

2021 Cell Reports

Parent AV#, Faleo G, Chavez J, Saxton M, Berrios DI, Kerper NR, Tang Q, Hebrok M#

Selective deletion of human leukocyte antigens protects stem cell-derived islets from immune rejection

2020 Nature Communications

Russell R, Carnese PP, Hennings TG, Walker EM, Russ HA, Liu JS, Giacometti S, Stein R, Hebrok M

Loss of the transcription factor MAFB limits β-cell derivation from human PSCs

2019 Nature Cell Biology

Nair GG, Liu JS, Russ HA, Tran S, Saxton MS, Chen R, Juang C, Li ML, Nguyen VQ, Giacometti S, Puri S, Xing Y, Wang Y, Szot GL, Oberholzer J, Bhushan A, Hebrok M

Recapitulating endocrine cell clustering in culture promotes maturation of human stem-cell-derived β cells

2018 Nature Communications

Puri S, Roy N, Russ HA, Leonhardt L, French EK, Roy R, Bengtsson H, Scott DK, Stewart AF, Hebrok M

Replication confers β cell immaturity

2016 Nature Communications

Zhu S*, Russ HA*, Wang X, Zhang M, Ma T, Xu T, Tang S, Hebrok M#, Ding S#

Human pancreatic beta-like cells converted from fibroblasts

2015 Cell

Suriben R, Kaihara KA, Paolino M, Reichelt M, Kummerfeld SK, Modrusan Z, Dugger DL, Newton K, Sagolla M, Webster JD, Liu J, Hebrok M, Dixit VM

β-Cell Insulin Secretion Requires the Ubiquitin Ligase COP1

2014 Nature Cell Biology

von Figura G, Fukuda A, Roy N, Liku ME, Morris Iv JP, Kim GE, Russ HA, Firpo MA, Mulvihill SJ, Dawson DW, Ferrer J, Mueller WF, Busch A, Hertel KJ, Hebrok M

The chromatin regulator Brg1 suppresses formation of intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

2013 Cell Stem Cell

Parent AV, Russ HA, Khan IS, LaFlam TN, Metzger TC, Anderson MS#, Hebrok M#

Generation of functional thymic epithelium from human embryonic stem cells that supports host T cell development

2012 Cancer Cell

Kopp JL*, von Figura G*, Mayes E, Liu FF, Dubois CL, Morris JP 4th, Pan FC, Akiyama H, Wright CV, Jensen K, Hebrok M#, Sander M#

Identification of Sox9-dependent acinar-to-ductal reprogramming as the principal mechanism for initiation of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

2011 Cancer Cell

Fukuda A*, Wang SC*, Morris JP 4th, Folias AE, Liou A, Kim GE, Akira S, Boucher KM, Firpo MA, Mulvihill SJ, Hebrok M

Stat3 and MMP7 contribute to pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma initiation and progression

2003 Nature

Thayer SP#, di Magliano MP, Heiser PW, Nielsen CM, Roberts DJ, Lauwers GY, Qi YP, Gysin S, Fernández-del Castillo C, Yajnik V, Antoniu B, McMahon M, Warshaw AL, Hebrok M#

Hedgehog is an early and late mediator of pancreatic cancer tumorigenesis

1998 Genes & Development

Hebrok M*, Kim SK*, Melton DA

Notochord repression of endodermal Sonic hedgehog permits pancreas development

The vision

Matthias Hebrok talks about his vision for his new Institute for Diabetes and Organoid Technology at Helmholtz Munich.

Read the interview

Prof. Dr. Matthias Hebrok

Academic Career and Research Areas

Fields of Work and Expertise

"Science must embrace invention, explore new avenues, test the unknown."

Professional Career

Director, Institute for Diabetes and Organoid Technology, Helmholtz Center Munich

Director, Center for Organoid Systems, Technical University Munich (TUM)

Professor and Chair for Applied Stem Cell and Organoid Systems, Technical University Munich (TUM)

Professor, Diabetes Center, Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco (UCSF)

Director, Diabetes Center, University of California San Francisco (UCSF)

Associate Professor, Diabetes Center, Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco (UCSF)

Assistant Professor, Diabetes Center, Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco (UCSF)

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Dept. of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University

Honors and Awards

Highlight publications

The vision

Matthias Hebrok talks about his vision for his new Institute for Diabetes and Organoid Technology at Helmholtz Munich.

Networks and Affiliations

Technical University Munich

University of California, San Francisco

Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation

EASD

American Diabetes Association

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