Harald Ott

Harald Ott is an expert in organ decellularization, matrix characterization and biomimetic organ culture. As a postdoc and Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota, he developed techniques for organ decellularization and generation of whole heart grafts. In 2006, he moved to MGH/Harvard as a cardiothoracic resident and started his laboratory. He has successfully decellularized lung, pancreas and kidney. Ott’s team comprises 15 postdocs, students, and fellows, and two Instructors who completed their postdoc training in his lab. With funding from several NIH grants and industrial collaborations, he has developed new techniques for tissue regeneration, including decellularization, bioreactors, cell differentiation, seeding, whole organ culture and graft transplantation. Several of Ott’s organ regeneration projects have been scaled up from in vitro “proof of principle”, to in vivo animal and human ex vivo models.