Darrell Kotton, a founding director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) of Boston University and Boston Medical Center, calls the Innovator of the Year award “an unexpected honor.”

Innovator of the Year

Pulmonologist Darrell Kotton Is BU’s Innovator of the Year

Regenerative medicine researcher is recognized for his work in pioneering lung disease treatments with stem cell technology and accelerating scientific discovery with open-access resources

Darrell Kotton and his team imagine a future where they can use a patient’s own cells to fix lung damage caused by disease—reprogramming cells in a laboratory dish and transplanting them back into the patient. The new lung cells would replicate, like regular cells do, replacing the damaged and diseased areas of the lung. By refining their work using sophisticated stem cell technology, Boston University pulmonologist Kotton and his team are inching closer and closer to realizing that vision. 

For this cutting-edge work, which could eventually help cure diseases like pulmonary fibrosis and cystic fibrosis, a disease caused by a genetic mutation, and reverse lung damage from conditions like emphysema, Kotton has been named BU’s Innovator of the Year.

“This is an unexpected honor,” says Kotton, the David C. Seldin Professor of Medicine at the BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. “I’m grateful to our team that helped innovate, and for an environment like BU where I have complete support from colleagues and leadership.” 

An attending physician and scientist, Kotton is a founding director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) of Boston University and Boston Medical Center, BU’s primary teaching hospital. The type of cellular engineering taking place in Kotton’s lab is at the forefront of regenerative medicine and research. 

“Darrell has identified gaps in diagnostics and treatments for pulmonary diseases and creative ways to use tissue stem cells to define how diseases develop, plus find targets for treatment,” says Karen Antman, dean of BU’s medical school and provost of the Medical Campus. “He has been equally creative in assembling a team of investigators in this cutting-edge science, getting them funded and creating a space conducive to efficient, collaborative research. He has been innovative both in science and management—a really effective combination.” 

At the beginning of Kotton’s career, reprogramming stem cells—undifferentiated cells of the human body that transform into specialized cells and have the ability to replicate indefinitely—to cure disease was considered “extremely esoteric,” he says. But he and his team pushed forward anyway. “We loved the mission and the questions so much that even if nothing worked, it was still fascinating and enough for us,” he says.

At the time, Kotton and his team focused on basic science questions, studying how pluripotent stem cells, which are only found in embryos, grow and transform to become specialized cells in the body. Then, in 2006, Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka figured out how to revert adult skin or blood cells back into an embryonic stem cell–like state, meaning that adult cells could be turned into any cell type in the body, including lung cells. Those engineered cells, called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, won Yamanaka the Nobel Prize in 2012, and opened the door to an entire new field of genetic engineering—propelling Kotton’s research from esoteric to mainstream, he says.

“That discovery meant that the same recipes and protocols we had been developing were suddenly applicable to the new engineered iPS cells, and we were extremely well positioned to apply a lot of our hard work and new knowledge immediately to this new type of cell,” Kotton says. Now, instead of making lung cells out of embryonic stem cells, they could create them from a person of any age with their own cells, making it more likely that new implanted cells would be accepted. 

“Like many of the world’s leading scientific innovators, Dr. Kotton is driven by an altruistic ambition to discover cures for currently incurable diseases,” says Thomas Bifano, BU vice president and associate provost ad interim for research, and a previous Innovator of the Year winner. “His pioneering work using induced pluripotent stem cells as building blocks to regenerate lung tissue has significantly advanced research into debilitating conditions such as cystic fibrosis. Beyond his groundbreaking contributions to lung regeneration, Dr. Kotton is widely recognized for his unwavering commitment to open-source biology—freely sharing ideas, databases, cell lines, protocols, and expertise to accelerate scientific innovation and discovery.”

In 2023, two studies published in Cell Stem Cell detailed how Kotton and his colleagues engineered lung stem cells and successfully transplanted them into injured lungs of mice. Two lines of cells targeted two different parts of the lung: the airways, including the trachea and bronchial tubes, and the alveoli, the delicate air sacs that deliver oxygen to the bloodstream. The findings could eventually lead to new ways for treating severe cases of COVID-19, emphysema, pulmonary fibrosis, and cystic fibrosis.

The Innovator of the Year award was announced at a special event that highlighted how BU faculty work with industry experts to address challenges associated with developing treatments for lung disease. For example, Kotton’s team recently started collaborating with United Kingdom–based biopharma giant GSK to use CReM-developed lung cells to better understand pulmonary fibrosis and to identify new drug targets to halt or slow the progression of the currently incurable disease. Kotton is CReM’s second Innovator of the Year winner: codirector Gustavo Mostoslavsky, a BU medical school professor of gastroenterology earned the title in 2017. 

“The work by Dr. Kotton and his colleagues meets unmet medical needs by harnessing innovative technology to develop cellular therapies for human diseases,” says Anthony Hollenberg, president of BMC and a BU professor of medicine. “The advances of CReM will allow for novel therapies previously not obtainable. This exemplifies why Dr. Kotton is an ideal choice of Innovator of the Year and why his leadership allows BMC and BU to remain at the leading edge of scientific discovery.”