Dr. Muhammad Mansoor Mohiuddin is a Professor of Surgery and Director of Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore, MD, USA. He has previously served as the chief of transplantation of Cardiothoracic Surgery Research Program at National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of NIH and held faculty positions at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Rush University, Chicago. Dr. Mohiuddin has been involved in xenotransplantation research since 1992 and has started Xenotransplantation research programs at the above institutions. Dr. Mohiuddin received his MBBS (MD) degree from Dow Medical College, Karachi, Pakistan and after completing his preliminary surgical training at Civil Hospital Karachi, finished his fellowships at University of Pennsylvania and Institute of Cellular Therapeutics (Drexel University).

Dr. Mohiuddin has devoted his entire career to xenotransplantation. His contribution to xenotransplantation includes demonstration of longest survival of heterotopic and now orthotopic cardiac xenograft (submitted). He served as Councilor of IXA for 4 years where he was instrumental in promoting liaisonship between IXA and FDA. He has published over 100 papers, over 150 abstracts and has delivered numerous presentations on xenotransplantation.

Dr. Mohiuddin is an Associate Editor of Journal Transplantation and reviews manuscripts for many other journals. He is also President-Elect of Dow Graduate Association of North America. His accomplishments include several NIH and non-NIH grants during his academic career.

Dr. Bottino is a world-renowned expert in pancreas and islet cell biology and transplantation. She served as the Director of the Islet Isolation Laboratory, first, at the University of Pittsburgh and, subsequently, at Allegheny Health Network. In conjunction with the Cleveland Clinic, her lab pioneered the utility of remote clinical islet isolation as part of total pancreatectomy and autologous islet transplantation. As the Director of the core, she has prioritized the ability to function as a Core Resource to assist investigators by providing the specialized or rare islets they require for their studies. The Bottino Lab has an unmatched record of islet isolations from pancreatic organs obtained from deceased human donors of all ages, including newborn.

Dr. Bottino has an extensive expertise in the isolation of islet cells from pigs, monkeys and rodents for research purposes, for experimental transplantation, as well as in developing models of diabetes in animals, in particular monkeys. Dr. Bottino conducted pioneer studies on the use of genetically engineered pigs as islet donors for xenotransplantation in immunosuppressed diabetic nonhuman recipients, demonstrating long-term normalization of blood glucose levels in recipients. Dr. Bottino currently serves as a Councilor of the IXA from North America. She has published >150 peer-reviewed articles in high impact journals, including Nature Medicine, Nature Communication, Lancet, Cell, Cell Rep, J Clin Invest, JCI Insight, Gastroenterology, and many more.

Prof. Paolo Brenner is a Professor for Cardiac Surgery and Head of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program of the Dept. of Cardiac Surgery of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich, Germany. Finishing his doctorate dealing with the mechanism of action of ACE-Inhibitors in 1995, Dr. Brenner was co-inventor of Ramipril. Since 1997 he established xenogeneic heart transplantation in Munich during a PhD-fellowship in the Walter-Brendel-Centre. He habilitated 2004 with the thesis of xenoperfusion and orthotopic or heterotopic xenotransplantation of hDAF-pig-hearts. In 2011, he qualified as an APL Professor in the Medical Department of the LMU.Prof. Brenner has received various grants for xenotransplantation such as: 1996-2004 from the Bavarian-Research-Foundation, 2004-2012 as DFG-Research-Group FOR535, 2012-2024 from the DFG-transregio-SFB127. Between 2017 -2020 Prof. Brenner achieved the worldwide first successful long-term surviving series in orthotopic cardiac xenotransplantation published in Nature and ISHLT Journal. He is member of several Cardiothoracic and Transplantation Societies.

The pioneer work of Prof. Brenner was honored by international and national awards like the Young-Investigator´s-Award of the EACTS in 1998, the Biotest-Award of ESOT in 1999, the Rolf-Becker-Prize of the LMU in 1999, the Scientific Award of the TTS-IXA in 2019 and the Ernst-Derra-Award of the DGTHG in 2020. Now he is planning a first clinical trial for cardiac xenotransplantation.

Dr. Björn Petersen studied Veterinary Medicine at the Veterinary University in Hannover, from which he graduated in 2002. The same year, he started his doctoral thesis at the Institute of Farm Animals in Mariensee, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. Heiner Niemann. Together with a colleague, he established the first pig cloning protocol in continental Europe and published the generation of GGTA1-KO pigs by somatic cell nuclear transfer and homologous recombination in 2004. Since 2002, Dr. Petersen has continuously worked in the xenotransplantation field and pioneered genome editing in pigs by employing ZFNs to generate biallelic GGTA1-KO pigs in 2011. He is a worldwide reputed scientist in the pig genome editing and Xenotransplantation field, where he developed essential pig models bringing xenotransplantation closer to the clinics.