Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Torsten Meissner, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School with an appointment in the Division of Surgical Sciences at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). The primary goal of his research is to create 'universal donor stem cells' that will resist immune rejection. Designed as 'off-the-shelf' products, ready for transplantation into any patient in need, such cells will be crucial to drive down the cost of production and thus democratize access to emerging cell therapies for indications such as type 1 diabetes (T1D), Parkinson's disease (PD), or macular degeneration (MD), where a particular cell type is lost over time and necessitates replacement with healthy tissue (StemJournal 2020; 2(1):1-5). Due to the paucity of donor material, stem cell-derived therapeutics grown in the laboratory are a promising alternative. A roadblock to these exciting new forms of treatment is immune rejection of the transplanted cells (Current Stem Cell Reports 2022; 8(4):206-218). During his postdoctoral work at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute Dr. Meissner has applied cutting-edge genome editing techniques to modify human pluripotent stem cell lines in order to protect them from immune rejection (PNAS 2019; 116:10441-10446). He has more than 15 years of experience in immunology, human pluripotent stem cell culture, cell differentiation, and genome editing. In 2019, Dr. Meissner joined the faculty of the Department of Surgery at BIDMC. In collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Elliot Chaikof, MD PhD, he is developing hypoimmunogenic blood vessels from stem cell-derived building blocks that can be used as living 'off-the-shelf' products for vascular reconstruction.