Pedro Herrera, Ph.D. - Investigator Profile
Pedro L. Herrera acquired his undergraduate biology training in the University Complutense (Madrid, Spain). He received his PhD in 1994, from the University of Geneva, Faculty of Sciences (Switzerland), under the guidance of Jean-Dominique Vassalli. In 1996 he became an independent investigator at the Faculty of Medicine of Geneva after obtaining his first regular grant award from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Today he is associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine as well as President of the University’s Animal Ethics Committee, and Director of its Transgenic Core Facility. He is member of several international scientific committees.
Pedro investigates pancreas development, cell lineage allocation during pancreatic ontogeny, and adult pancreas regeneration using different transgenic mouse models. He pioneered the study of mouse pancreas development and carried out the first in vivo ablation of different pancreatic endocrine cell types during his thesis (Herrera et al, 1991; Herrera et al, 1994). Later, he performed the first in vivo cell lineage tracing analysis using the Cre/loxP system (Herrera, 2000), and demonstrated the existence of competence windows for beta-catenin signaling in exocrine cells during pancreatic growth (Strom et al., 2007). He has found that adult acinar cells can transdifferentiate to adipocytes with ageing and in certain pathological conditions (Bonal et al., 2009), thus seeding new light on the origin of adipose tissue and adult cell plasticity. More recently, he showed that pancreatic Neurogenin3-expressing cells, which are the precursors to all islet endocrine cell types, are strictly unipotent at the single cell level in vivo (Desgraz & Herrera, 2009). In the field of regenerative biology, he has found that the adult pancreas retains the ability of making new b-cells after their total or near total loss, and that this process reveals a high degree of cell plasticity, since the majority of the regenerated b-cells are indeed fully mature adult a-cells that have spontaneously reprogrammed to producing insulin and other b-cell-specific factors in this situation of extreme b-cell loss (Thorel et al, 2010).
Scientific Interests/Keywords
pancreas development; beta cell development and generation; regeneration; reprogramming; cell tracing; transgenic mice
Affiliates
Publications
| PubMedID | Citation |
|---|---|
| 20413507 | Ait-Lounis A, Bonal C, Seguín-Estévez Q, Schmid CD, Bucher P, Herrera PL, Durand B, Meda P, Reith W. The transcription factor Rfx3 regulates beta-cell differentiation, function, and glucokinase expression. (2010) Diabetes 59: 1674-85 |
| 20382751 | Métrailler-Ruchonnet I, Pagano A, Carnesecchi S, Khatib K, Herrera P, Donati Y, Bron C, Barazzone Argiroffo C. Bcl-2 over-expression in type II epithelial cells does not prevent hyperoxia-induced acute lung injury in mice. (2010) Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol : |
| 20374962 | Gu C, Stein GH, Pan N, Goebbels S, Hörnberg H, Nave KA, Herrera P, White P, Kaestner KH, Sussel L, Lee JE. Pancreatic beta cells require NeuroD to achieve and maintain functional maturity. (2010) Cell Metab 11: 298-310 |
| 20364121 | Thorel F, Népote V, Avril I, Kohno K, Desgraz R, Chera S, Herrera PL. Conversion of adult pancreatic alpha-cells to beta-cells after extreme beta-cell loss. (2010) Nature 464: 1149-54 |
| 20138042 | Lu J, Herrera PL, Carreira C, Bonnavion R, Seigne C, Calender A, Bertolino P, Zhang CX. Alpha cell-specific Men1 ablation triggers the transdifferentiation of glucagon-expressing cells and insulinoma development. (2010) Gastroenterology 138: 1954-65 |
| 19793886 | Desgraz R, Herrera PL. Pancreatic neurogenin 3-expressing cells are unipotent islet precursors. (2009) Development 136: 3567-74 |
| 19356716 | Kawamori D, Kurpad AJ, Hu J, Liew CW, Shih JL, Ford EL, Herrera PL, Polonsky KS, McGuinness OP, Kulkarni RN. Insulin signaling in alpha cells modulates glucagon secretion in vivo. () Cell Metab 9: 350-61 |
| 19065050 | Cantley J, Selman C, Shukla D, Abramov AY, Forstreuter F, Esteban MA, Claret M, Lingard SJ, Clements M, Harten SK, Asare-Anane H, Batterham RL, Herrera PL, Persaud SJ, Duchen MR, Maxwell PH, Withers DJ. Deletion of the von Hippel-Lindau gene in pancreatic beta cells impairs glucose homeostasis in mice. (2009) J Clin Invest 119: 125-35 |
| 19022256 | Bonal C, Thorel F, Ait-Lounis A, Reith W, Trumpp A, Herrera PL. Pancreatic inactivation of c-Myc decreases acinar mass and transdifferentiates acinar cells into adipocytes in mice. (2009) Gastroenterology 136: 309-319.e9 |
| 19015267 | Carobbio S, Frigerio F, Rubi B, Vetterli L, Bloksgaard M, Gjinovci A, Pournourmohammadi S, Herrera PL, Reith W, Mandrup S, Maechler P. Deletion of glutamate dehydrogenase in beta-cells abolishes part of the insulin secretory response not required for glucose homeostasis. (2009) J Biol Chem 284: 921-9 |
| 18956314 | Bonal C, Herrera PL. Genes controlling pancreas ontogeny. (2008) Int J Dev Biol 52: 823-35 |
| 18713856 | Louagie E, Taylor NA, Flamez D, Roebroek AJ, Bright NA, Meulemans S, Quintens R, Herrera PL, Schuit F, Van de Ven WJ, Creemers JW. Role of furin in granular acidification in the endocrine pancreas: identification of the V-ATPase subunit Ac45 as a candidate substrate. (2008) Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105: 12319-24 |
| 17706201 | Quoix N, Cheng-Xue R, Guiot Y, Herrera PL, Henquin JC, Gilon P. The GluCre-ROSA26EYFP mouse: a new model for easy identification of living pancreatic alpha-cells. (2007) FEBS Lett 581: 4235-40 |
| 17596282 | Strom A, Bonal C, Ashery-Padan R, Hashimoto N, Campos ML, Trumpp A, Noda T, Kido Y, Real FX, Thorel F, Herrera PL. Unique mechanisms of growth regulation and tumor suppression upon Apc inactivation in the pancreas. (2007) Development 134: 2719-25 |
| 17404619 | Collombat P, Hecksher-Sorensen J, Krull J, Berger J, Riedel D, Herrera PL, Serup P, Mansouri A. Embryonic endocrine pancreas and mature beta cells acquire alpha and PP cell phenotypes upon Arx misexpression. (2007) J Clin Invest 117: 961-70 |
| 16786601 | Kockel L, Strom A, Delacour A, Nepote V, Hagenbuchle O, Wellauer PK, Herrera PL. An amylase/Cre transgene marks the whole endoderm but the primordia of liver and ventral pancreas. (2006) Genesis 44: 287-96 |
| 16642023 | Hashimoto N, Kido Y, Uchida T, Asahara S, Shigeyama Y, Matsuda T, Takeda A, Tsuchihashi D, Nishizawa A, Ogawa W, Fujimoto Y, Okamura H, Arden KC, Herrera PL, Noda T, Kasuga M. Ablation of PDK1 in pancreatic beta cells induces diabetes as a result of loss of beta cell mass. (2006) Nat Genet 38: 589-93 |
| 16611688 | Heiser PW, Lau J, Taketo MM, Herrera PL, Hebrok M. Stabilization of beta-catenin impacts pancreas growth. (2006) Development 133: 2023-32 |
| 16215705 | Riggs AC, Bernal-Mizrachi E, Ohsugi M, Wasson J, Fatrai S, Welling C, Murray J, Schmidt RE, Herrera PL, Permutt MA. Mice conditionally lacking the Wolfram gene in pancreatic islet beta cells exhibit diabetes as a result of enhanced endoplasmic reticulum stress and apoptosis. (2005) Diabetologia 48: 2313-21 |
| 15879142 | Aurrand-Lions M, Lamagna C, Dangerfield JP, Wang S, Herrera P, Nourshargh S, Imhof BA. Junctional adhesion molecule-C regulates the early influx of leukocytes (2005) J Immunol 174: 6406-15 |
| 15680365 | Lee CS, Sund NJ, Behr R, Herrera PL, Kaestner KH. Foxa2 is required for the differentiation of pancreatic alpha-cells. (2005) Dev Biol 278: 484-95 |
| 15561943 | Lu Y, Herrera PL, Guo Y, Sun D, Tang Z, LeRoith D, Liu JL. Pancreatic-specific inactivation of IGF-I gene causes enlarged pancreatic (2004) Diabetes 53: 3131-41 |
| 15331541 | Gesina E, Tronche F, Herrera P, Duchene B, Tales W, Czernichow P, Breant B. Dissecting the role of glucocorticoids on pancreas development. (2004) Diabetes 53: 2322-9 |
| 15110714 | Ashery-Padan R, Zhou X, Marquardt T, Herrera P, Toube L, Berry A, Gruss P. Conditional inactivation of Pax6 in the pancreas causes early onset of (2004) Dev Biol 269: 479-88 |
| 15012626 | Zaiko M, Estreicher A, Ritz-Laser B, Herrera P, Favor J, Meda P, Philippe J. Pax2 mutant mice display increased number and size of islets of Langerhans (2004) Eur J Endocrinol 150: 389-95 |
| 14980497 | Theis M, Mas C, Doring B, Degen J, Brink C, Caille D, Charollais A, Kruger O, Plum A, Nepote V, Herrera P, Meda P, Willecke K. Replacement by a lacZ reporter gene assigns mouse connexin36, 45 and 43 to (2004) Exp Cell Res 294: 18-29 |
| 14706695 | Delacour A, Nepote V, Trumpp A, Herrera PL. Nestin expression in pancreatic exocrine cell lineages. (2004) Mech Dev 121: 3-14 |
| 12941803 | Bertolino P, Tong WM, Herrera PL, Casse H, Zhang CX, Wang ZQ. Pancreatic beta-cell-specific ablation of the multiple endocrine neoplasia (2003) Cancer Res 63: 4836-41 |
| 12624426 | Herrera PL, Nepote V, Delacour A. Pancreatic cell lineage analyses in mice. (2002) Endocrine 19: 267-78 |
| 12475772 | Wang H, Hagenfeldt-Johansson K, Otten LA, Gauthier BR, Herrera PL, Wollheim CB. Experimental models of transcription factor-associated maturity-onset (2002) Diabetes 51 Suppl 3: S333-42 |
| 12370279 | Xuan S, Kitamura T, Nakae J, Politi K, Kido Y, Fisher PE, Morroni M, Cinti S, White MF, Herrera PL, Accili D, Efstratiadis A. Defective insulin secretion in pancreatic beta cells lacking type 1 IGF (2002) J Clin Invest 110: 1011-9 |
| 11902693 | Herrera PL. Defining the cell lineages of the islets of Langerhans using transgenic (2002) Int J Dev Biol 46: 97-103 |
Resource Contributions
| Resource ID | Name | Contributed on |
|---|---|---|
| 177 | B6.CBA-Tg(Gcg-cre)1Herr/Mmnc | Mar 7, 2006 |
| 178 | B6.CBA-Tg(Ipf1-EGFP)1Herr/Mmnc | Mar 7, 2006 |
| 179 | B6;D2-Tg(Ins-cre)23Herr | Mar 7, 2006 |
| 180 | B6;D2-Tg(NEUROG3-cre)1Herr | Mar 7, 2006 |
| 4 completed resources viewable | ||
