- C.N.H. Long Professor, Department of Immunobiology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University
- Professor, Department of Endocrinology, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University
Dr. Kevan C. Herold is the C.N.H. Long Professor of Immunobiology and of Medicine (Endocrinology) at Yale University, where he has built a program in translational immunology applying mechanistic discoveries to the treatment of autoimmune diseases, including Type 1 diabetes (T1D). After his training as an Endocrinologist and Immunologist, he conducted research at the Hagedorn Research Laboratory in Denmark, joined the faculty at the University of Chicago, and subsequently held a position at Columbia University before moving to Yale in 2006.
Dr. Herold is best known for bringing teplizumab — the first drug approved by the FDA to treat the underlying cause of T1D — from mouse models to human patients. He demonstrated that brief treatment with teplizumab, a humanized FcR non-binding anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody, could reduce beta cell killing without continuous immune suppression and improve clinical outcomes. He led the studies supporting its approval in both the US and Europe, making it the first drug approved to prevent any autoimmune disease.
His research bridges immunology, cell biology, and metabolism, illuminating relationships between immune and endocrine cells. He has identified how beta cells adapt to and survive immune attack, developed an assay to measure beta cell death in vivo, described autoimmune diabetes induced by anti-PD-1/L1 checkpoint inhibitors in cancer patients, and identified mechanisms that protect beta cells from inflammatory mediators — work informing the development of replacement beta cells for patients with diabetes.
Dr. Herold serves as Chair of NIDDK TrialNet and was awarded the Watanabe Prize in 2025.
