https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/our-people/staff-z/paolo-de-coppi/

Paolo De Coppi

Mr Paolo De Coppi is a Consultant Paediatric Surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), and Reader and Head of Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at the UCL Institute of Child Health in London.

He has been an Honorary Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, since 2013, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, since 2009 and an Honorary Assistant Professor in Paediatric Surgery at the University of Padua, Italy, since 2005.

Special interests

Mr De Coppi has a special interest in congenital malformations and their treatment using minimally invasive techniques. He has focused his research interests on stem cells and tissue engineering by trying to find new modalities for the treatment of complex congenital anomalies.

Specialisms

Research Interests

While working with Anthony Atala, M.D., at the Boston Children’s Hospital (Massachusetts), Mr De Coppi identified the possibility of using stem cells from amniotic fluid for therapeutic applications. This finding generated an international patent and garnered the cover story of Nature Biotechnology in January 2007. It has also opened the door to discovery for novel approaches to correct congenital malformations. More recently, his team has demonstrated that these cells are able to differentiate into various tissues and to replace functional activity in animal model of diseases.

Mr De Coppi is now focused on developing reliable methods for stem cell isolation, expansion and differentiation at a clinical level (GMP-grade). Finally, in 2010, he was part of the team that performed the first successful transplantation of a tissue-engineered trachea on a child at the GOSH.

Publications

Mr De Coppi has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as The Lancet, Nature Biotechnology, PNAS, Blood and FASEB Journal. He has supervised more than 30 research fellow and Ph.D. students and has been awarded various national and international grants.

Since 2009, he has been on the editorial boards of Paediatric Surgery International, Stem Cell Development, and Fetal and Maternal Medicine Review. As of 2011 he has been Senior Editor for Stem Cell Translational Medicine, a lead journal in the field of translational stem cells.