Anita Kurmann

Anita Agatha Kurmann (November 22, 1976 – August 7, 2015) was a Swiss endocrinologist and thyroid surgeon. She studied medicine in Basel and worked at the Inselspital in Bern, then moved to Boston to train in research at the Beth Israel Deaconess hospital, where she was a post-doctoral fellow. She worked with a multi-institution group based at Boston University that was the first to generate thyroid cell progenitors and thyroid follicular organoids from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) in mice, and thyroid cell progenitors from induced PSCs in humans. This was achieved by establishing the signalling required to create a thyroid lineage, namely BMP4 and FGF2. It was shown that thyroid hormones were secreted by the mice organoids after transplantation into mice. Kurmann was to have returned to Switzerland to become head of endocrine surgery at the Inselspital, but died in a bicycle accident in Boston. The group's paper of which she was co-lead author was dedicated to her memory. Following this accident, the intersection of Beacon Street where it occurred was equipped with advanced stop lines.