Matthias von Herrath, M.D., and his team study why the immune system attacks the body's own cells. They focus on type 1 diabetes and immune-based interventions.
During his emerging independent career Dr. von Herrath defined the basis for combination therapies in type 1 diabetes and developed several platforms for antigenic vaccines to prevent the disease. He received the George Koehler award by the German Immunology Society in 2000, the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award by the American Diabetes Society in 2006 and the Paul Langerhans Medal by the German Diabetes Association in 2014.
Dr. von Herrath was ranked by the independent ranking platform Expertscape as the number 1 type 1 diabetes expert in 2014. In 2012 he joined Novo Nordisk as Vice President and Head of the Seattle Type 1 Diabetes R&D Center in order to develop better interventions for type 1 diabetes. He also maintains a part-time appointment as Professor at La Jolla Institute to further study the basic pathology of human diabetes.
