Heiko Lickert is a Full Professor and Chair of b-cell biology in the Medical Faculty of the Technical University Munich (TUM) and is the Director of the Institute of Diabetes and Regeneration Research (IDR) and Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Stem Cell Research (ISF) at the Helmholtzzentrum München. He is in the Executive Committee of the Helmholtz Diabetes Zentrum (HDC) and TUMCells GMP Facility, as well as in the Research Coordination Board of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD). He obtained his PhD from the Albert-Ludwig University and Max-Planck Institute in Freiburg and his Postdoctoral studies were carried out at the Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada. He is an expert on organ development and tissue homeostasis with emphasis on endocrine lineage formation in the gut and pancreas, insulin-producing b-cell development, regeneration and replacement, as well as metabolic signaling and stem cell-based drug screening. His research has been funded by the European Research Council (ERC), a prestigious Emmy-Noether fellowship of the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, the Helmholtz Association and the European Union.

Research interest:
The primary objective of the Institute of Diabetes and Regeneration Research (IDR) at the Helmholtz Diabetes Center München is to develop regenerative therapeutic approaches to treat diabetes mellitus - complementary and alternative to the classical immunological and metabolic therapy strategies. Therefore, the aim is 1) to understand endoderm and pancreas development, as well as β-cell homeostasis and function for triggering in vivo regeneration of endogenous β-cells and 2) to improve current strategies for functional β-cell production from pluripotent stem cells in vitro with the ultimate goal to provide alternative sources of β-cells for cell replacement therapy in diabetes.