Welcome to Kuhtreiber.net
Willem Kuhtreiber has 26 years of research experience and holds an MS from the University of Nijmegen and a Cum Laude PhD from the University of Utrecht, both in the Netherlands. His early research career was in the area of Developmental Biology and concentrated on the role of cell communication in the establishment of cell fate during embryogenesis. While at the NIH-funded National Vibrating Probe Facility (MBL, Woods Hole, MA) he developed ultra-sensitive ion-specific vibrating probe techniques and used them to measure calcium ion and hydrogen gradients during embryogenesis, fertilization and differentiation.
Subsequently, he joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Boston, MA, as an Assistant Researcher in the Laboratory for Molecular Endocrinology and an Assistant in Biochemistry, at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as well as an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. His research there showed how GLP-1 (glucagon like peptide-1) primes insulin-producing pancreatic cells to respond to blood glucose, resulting in the secretion of insulin.
Dr. Kuhtreiber worked at BioHybrid Technologies from 1992 to 2001. In his role as the Director of Islet Physiology he developed innovative cell encapsulation and immunoisolation technologies for the treatment of diabetes with encapsulated allografts and xenografts. He also developed methods for isolation, primary culture and QC of pancreatic islets from porcine, bovine, canine and human pancreas and worked on the in vitro proliferation of pancreatic beta cells from isolated islets and islet stem cells.
In 2001 he returned to MGH and Harvard Medical School and successfully developed the first method to analyze the presence of pathogenic auto-immune cells in the NOD mouse model as well as in the blood of human Type I diabetics.
Dr. Kuhtreiber joined Novocell in 2005 as the Director of Cell Biology and directed the work on human islet isolation, prolonged islet tissue culture and physiology, as well as islet cell replication and differentiation from stem cells. Improvements to human islet isolation processes resulted in a doubling of the islet yield and product development activities leading to using these cells in a FDA approved clinical trial for the treatment of insulin dependent diabetes. With the closing of the islet transplant and encapsulation section, he elected to leave Novocell and joined the City of Hope in Duarte, CA, to assist the leadership of their ongoing human islet transplantation clinical trials, as well as perform fundamental research with an emphasis on non-invasive islet imaging and islet injury models.
In May of 2008 Dr. Kuhtreiber joined Prodo Laboratories as Chief Scientific Officer to manage and define the company’s scientific operations. He led the company’s research and product development efforts, and was responsible for academic and corporate research collaborations.
In August of 2010 he moved back to the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School to continue work on the development of bioassays and biomarkers in autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes and Sjögren’s disease using advanced flow cytometry and high throughput automated Western blotting and Isoelectric Focusing methods.
