Ellen Heber-Katz

Ellen Heber-Katz, PhD, is a professor at Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR), a biomedical research facility in Wynnewood, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia. She is an immunologist who investigates mammalian regeneration, having discovered the unusual ability of the MRL mouse strain (used in autoimmunity research) to regenerate wounds without scarring and to fully restore damaged tissues, an ability not normally seen in mammals. Her work on regeneration has been extended into National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded studies of novel aspects of breast cancer causation. Her research interests include immunology, regenerative medicine and cancer.

Dr. Heber-Katz earned her B.A. in microbiology and immunology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in 1969, and her M.S. in immunology from the same university in 1972. For her M.S. thesis, she studied the role of reducing agents as a critical factor in cellular immune responses. She then moved to Philadelphia to attend the University of Pennsylvania and was awarded her Ph.D. in immunology in 1976. For her doctoral thesis she demonstrated that single T-cell subsets could respond to both histocompatibility antigens and environmental antigens, establishing the unity of these two branches of the immune response. She continued that theme as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the Laboratory of Immunology (part of the National Institutes of Health [NIH]) with the first functional evidence for the T cell–antigen-MHC-Ia tri-molecular complex anticipating the crystal structure. It had long been known that T cells could be activated against foreign antigens (e.g., viruses, bacteria) only when these were "presented" to the T cell by specialized cells known as macrophages. What was not known was how the cells made their critical interactions.

With a very clever use of genetically inbred mice, Dr. Heber-Katz and collaborators dissected the fine molecular details that control the T-cell and macrophage interaction. This well-known "A/5R experiment" confirmed the Determinant Selection Hypothesis concerning the spatial relationships between the histocompatibility I-A and I-E molecules on the surface of antigen- presenting cells, the bound antigen and the recognition structure of the T-cell receptor. That "tri-molecular complex" is the fundamental unit of specificity in the immune response.

Upon leaving the NIH, Dr. Heber-Katz was recruited to the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, by its director and famed vaccinologist Hilary Koprowski, MD. While at Wistar, Dr. Heber-Katz developed the first vaccine capable of eliciting a purely T-cell response that was fully protective against a lethal challenge of herpes simplex virus in the complete absence of antibodies, and she patented a generic structure for a purely T-cell activating vaccine. That T cells alone — in the absence of a detectable antibody response — could confer protection against a lethal viral challenge was outside of mainstream thinking at the time (mid-1980s). Today, it is recognized as a critical vaccine concept.

Broadening her immunology studies into the area of autoimmunity, she discovered that particular autoimmune diseases were under the control of delimited and separable T-cell receptor subsets (the V-region disease hypothesis). It was during the course of an autoimmunity study that Heber-Katz discovered the regeneration trait of the MRL mouse, which has largely occupied her research program for the past 15 years.

In 2014, Dr. Heber-Katz brought her lab to LIMR, which is part of Main Line Health, a non-profit health system serving portions of Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs.

She also is a member of the Molecular Biology and Genetics Program at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University. She holds five patents for vaccines and wound healing.

While working at the Wistar Institute in 1996, Dr. Heber-Katz serendipitously discovered the unusual ability of the MRL mouse strain (which had been used for almost 50 years in autoimmunity research) to regenerate wounds without scarring and to fully restore damaged tissues, including cartilage and hair follicles, an ability not normally seen in mammals. It had long been assumed that amphibians and reptiles were the last branch of the evolutionary tree capable of regenerating lost or injured tissues, organs and limbs, while mammals (including mice and humans) were, with a few rare exceptions, capable only of tissue repair (scarring). Dr. Heber-Katz's discovery of the "super-healer" MRL mouse initiated the study of multi-organ/multi-tissue regeneration beyond amphibian biology to a medically significant species of mammal.

Her bold move into this field led to her worldwide recognition as thought leader in the field of regenerative biology.