Henk-Jan Schuurman, Ph.D., Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation

Professor of Surgery, Co-Director and Senior Investigator for Preclinical Transplantation

Henk-Jan Schuurman, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation (DIIT) and Chief Executive Officer of Spring Point Project (SPP).  His main role at the Diabetes Institute is to support the islet transplant program.  Previously, he was Director of BioMedical Research at Royal Numico, a Netherlands-based nutrition company specializing in baby food and clinical nutrition.  Between 2001 and 2004, Dr. Schuurman served as Vice President of Research at Immerge BioTherapeutics, a joint venture of Novartis Pharma AG and BioTransplant Inc., focused on the development of pig xenotransplantation into clinical practice.  During these years, he guided the successful collaboration with the DIIT.  The unprecedented achievements with the functional survival of porcine islets in diabetic monkeys formed the basis of establishing SPP.  SPP is a nonprofit organization that's committed to expediting the widespread availability of islet cell tissue for diabetes care by developing a premier source of pigs for islet xenotransplantation.

Before moving to the United States, Dr. Schuurman led allotransplantation programs in Switzerland and xenotransplatation programs in the United Kingdom for Novartis Pharma AG.  He holds a Ph.D. in Analytical Immunochemistry from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.  Before joining Novartis/Sandoz, Dr. Schuurman worked in clinical and experimental immunopathology at the University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.  He has widely published in the field of (medical) immunology, including transplantation biology, immunodeficiency, immunopathology and immunotoxicology.

Curriculum Vitae (.pdf)
Publications, Patents, and Presentations (.pdf)