Kevan Herold, MD

Dr. Herold was trained in Endocrinology and Immunology at the University of Chicago, and the Hagedorn Research Laboratory in Denmark. He joined the faculty at The University of Chicago afterwards and then moved to New York to the Columbia University and in 2006, to Yale University. He has built a program in translational immunology focused applying mechanistic discoveries to treat autoimmune diseases, including Type 1 diabetes (T1D). He has pioneered studies of teplizumab a humanized FcR non-binding anti-CD3 mAb (teplizumab) that he showed could reduce beta cell killing without continuous immune suppression and improved clinical outcomes in patients with Type 1 diabetes. Most recently, he led a study by NIDDK TrialNet showing teplizumab delayed the onset of clinical T1D in non-diabetic relatives at high risk for T1D. Teplizumab was approved by the FDA in November 2022 for delay of T1D. It is the first drug approved drug to modulate the course of type 1 diabetes and first to delay or prevent any autoimmune diseases. His studies have bridged immunology, cell biology and metabolism and identified relationships between immune and endocrine cells. He found recoverable impairments of beta cells in preclinical models and patients by describing how beta cells adapt to and survive immune attack by “dedifferentiation”. He was also the first to describe autoimmune diabetes that was induced by anti-PD-1/L1 checkpoint inhibitors in patients treated for cancers and the clinical, cellular, and molecular mechanisms underlying this event. Lastly he was appointed as the Chair of NIDDK TrialNet in June 2021.