Member Spotlight: Darrell Kotton, MD

Darrell Kotton, MD
Center for Regenerative Medicine of Boston University & Boston Medical Center, USA

Hometown
Beachwood, OH (born in Johannesburg, South Africa and moved to Beachwood when I was 10 years old.)

Current Residence
Newton, MA

Graduate Degree
MD

Postdoc Work
Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at Boston University with research fellowship under Alan Fine; Post-doctoral fellowship in Stem Cell Biology with Richard Mulligan in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School

Current Position
Director, Center for Regenerative Medicine of Boston University and Boston Medical Center; David C. Seldin Professor of Medicine

• What is the current focus of your research?

  Lung injury, repair, and development

• How would you explain the significance of this work to a lay audience?

  Our lab has developed a variety of model systems to better understand how the lung responds to injury and to guide the discovery of therapeutic approaches that might augment lung repair or regenerate diseased lung tissues. Many of our publications feature induced pluripotent stem cells differentiated into a wide variety of lung, thyroid, or liver cell types. We study and gene edit these lineages in cell culture models in vitro and also transplant these cells into animal models of lung, liver, or thyroid diseases in vivo with the goal of regenerating the dysfunctional tissues that we are know are responsible for disease in our patients.

• What do you find most rewarding about your work?

  The patients and their communities who stand to benefit from our work often interact with us at meetings -- either at conferences or during visits to our Center -- this sense of shared mission is deeply meaningful and the most rewarding part of our work. I have also long been a champion of "Open Source Biology", an approach where knowledge, cells, and reagents are shared without restriction or exclusivity. One of the most rewarding aspects of our center is our patient-derived iPSC bank, through which we have shared 100's of vials of our cells with the international research community as an Open Source reagent.

• What is the most exciting aspect of your work?

  The pursuit of genetic or degenerative lung diseases provides a lot of excitement for our team. Sharing our iPSC-derived lung alveolar and airway cells with the international community for collaborative COVID-19 disease modeling early in the pandemic was particularly exciting, since we felt we were in hot pursuit of COVID therapies with all our colleagues - that was an exciting time and extremely meaningful.

• What led you to become a scientist and to stem cell research?

  My frustration with the lack of effective therapies for many lung diseases motivated me to pursue basic science research during my pulmonary fellowship training -- I became unexpectedly obsessed with basic stem cell biology during that fellowship which led me to change my career goals to train as a physician-scientist focused on stem cells and regenerative medicine.

• What guidance would you share in talking with trainees interested in pursuing your area of research?

  As we become more senior I feel we tend to advise trainees about long term career trajectories and goals in a way that neglects the randomness of most of our successful career trajectories. So, I'd like to emphasize that the journey of pursuing a life or career as a successful basic scientist is in reality based on day to day curiosity. Most of us got where we are simply by doing one experiment at a time and coming to the lab the next day to look at our results: watching our cells or trying to interpret or PCR results and then troubleshooting or testing the next focused hypothesis. Good mentors help us to see the forrest from the trees as we progress through these experiments, but it is really a day by day journey and before you know it answering day to day questions turns into a successful career in science. So, I'd say it is more about the journey than the destination.

• Do you have any mentors or individuals who have inspired you in your stem cell work?

  I've had several at each stage of my journey one of my Professors, Bruce Dowton, mentored me informally. During my pulmonary research fellowship, my lab PI, Alan Fine, was an ideal mentor who is largely responsible for stimulating love of stem cell research and basic science - he's the reason I changed my career goals from 100% clinical to becoming a physician-scientist focused mostly on basic science. My post-doctoral fellowship PI, Richard Mulligan at Harvard, mentored me and really emphasized critical thinking related to stem cell biology and gene therapy. And in my faculty role, David Center, Jerry Brody, Mary Williams, and David Coleman all at Boston University have served as mentors.

• How do you spend your free time?

  I read, go on hikes, play guitar, and enjoy sailing around Boston Harbor and Cape Cod.

• What is something your peers would be surprised to learn about you?

  Before going to medical school, I spent a year at the Berklee College of Music in Boston studying guitar performance. I also think my peers would be surprised to learn that I'm a kite surfer.

• What do you most value about your membership with the ISSCR?

  I am grateful for the opportunity to interact with superb iPSC-focused scientists who are outside my field of lung disease. The chance to get to know and serve on ISSCR committees with them has often expanded my horizons as they teach me lessons from their non-lung fields that I can apply to my lung related stem cell research.