Name Detlef Schuppan | ||
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Detlef Schuppan (born 9 August 1954 in Essen, Germany) is a German biochemist and physician. He focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of coeliac disease and wheat sensitivity, fibrotic liver diseases and the immunology of chronic diseases and cancer. He is the director of the Institute of Translational Immunology and a professor of internal medicine, gastroenterology, and hepatology at the Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany. He directs the outpatient clinic for coeliac disease and small intestinal diseases. He is also a professor of medicine and senior visiting scientist at Harvard Medical School.
Contents
- Early life and education
- Work
- Key achievements
- Key publications
- Awards selection
- Memberships selection
- References
Early life and education
Schuppan was born on 9 August 1954 in Essen, Germany, to Helga Schuppan (née Pahnke) and Senate President Dr. Walther Schuppan. He studied chemistry and medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and medicine at the Philipp University of Marburg and the Free University of Berlin. In 1982, he received a Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, outside Munich, where he studied the primary structure of basement membrane collagen. In 1986, he received his M.D. from the Free University of Berlin, and three years later, he received his second Ph.D. in medicine summa cum laude after identifying and characterizing undulin/collagen type XIV. He then habilitated in biochemistry (1992) and internal medicine (1996) at the Free University of Berlin. He earned his board certification for internal medicine in 1993 and gastroenterology in 1996.
He is currently married to Dr. Kristin Gisbert-Schuppan, a psychologist. He has three daughters from his first marriage and a son from his current wife.
Work
From 1997 to 2004, Schuppan worked as a professor, chief medical consultant, and deputy medical director in the Department of Medicine at the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. From 2004 to 2010, he was a lecturer, first associate, and later full professor of medicine and clinical attending physician/consultant in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, part of Harvard Medical School. In 2011, he became director of the coeliac disease and fibrosis center at the University of Mainz and a senior visiting scientist at Beth Israel Deaconess. Since 2013, he has been the director of the Institute of Translational Immunology at the University of Mainz.
Schuppan has had visiting professorships at Columbia University, Yale University, Duke University, the University of Maryland, the Mayo Clinic, the Weizmann Institute of Science, and the University of California at Los Angeles and San Diego.
His clinical work and research are focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of chronic inflammatory diseases and the translation of these findings into clinical practice. He has helped develop novel diagnostic tools and therapies for inflammatory and fibrotic (scarring) diseases of the liver (cirrhosis), intestine, and other organs, and for coeliac disease, non-coeliac/non-allergy gluten sensitivity, and associated autoimmune and systemic diseases. He has researched the role of the immune system in the defense against cancer, especially of the liver and the gastrointestinal tract, and the role of nutrition in autoimmune and metabolic diseases, especially non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and Type 2 diabetes. His focus is on the development of targeted and individualized therapies—based, for example, on therapeutic nanoparticles as drug carriers in combination with the development of specific disease biomarkers.
Key achievements
Key publications
Schuppan has authored more than 70 book chapters and more than 400 PubMed-listed scientific publications.
He has edited several medical research books and is associate editor of high-ranking scientific journals like Gastroenterology, Journal of Hepatology, American Journal of Physiology and Journal of Clinical Investigation. Since 2011, he has been chair of the Scientific Council of the German Coeliac Society. Schuppan is the only German physician and scientist who has been a full professor of medicine both in the United States and in Germany.