Prof. Dr. Matthias Hebrok
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)“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.”
“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.”
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
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
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
Highlight publications
Google Scholar2021 Cell Reports
2020 Nature Communications
Loss of the transcription factor MAFB limits β-cell derivation from human PSCs
2019 Nature Cell Biology
2018 Nature Communications
2016 Nature Communications
2014 Nature Cell Biology
2013 Cell Stem Cell
2012 Cancer Cell
2011 Cancer Cell
Stat3 and MMP7 contribute to pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma initiation and progression
1998 Genes & Development
Notochord repression of endodermal Sonic hedgehog permits pancreas development
Networks and Affiliations
Technical University Munich
University of California, San Francisco
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
EASD
