Darrell Kotton, MD: Principal Investigator

Darrell N. Kotton, MD is a physician-scientist who cares for patients with lung disease and leads a research program focused on understanding the basic biology of lung injury and repair. He is the inaugural endowed David C. Seldin Professor in the Department of Medicine and in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. Since 2008 he has served as the founding director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine of Boston University and Boston Medical Center.

ISSCR spotlight feature on Dr. Kotton (2023)

Articles and interviews featuring the Kotton Lab:

• Opening the doors to open source medicine (2012)
• Cracking the NIH code (2015)
• Stem cell therapy and lung disease, 20 years in the making (2023)

More about the Principal Investigator:

Dr. Kotton received a Bachelor of Arts degree with major in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 before going on to study guitar performance at the Berklee College of Music in Boston from 1989-90. In 1994 he graduated with an M.D. degree from Washington University in St. Louis where he received a full tuition merit scholarship award as a Distinguished Student Scholar. Dr. Kotton completed clinical residency training in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a pulmonary and critical care medicine clinical fellowship at Boston University and Boston Medical Center. After completing clinical training, Dr. Kotton completed two basic science research post-doctoral fellowships: with Dr. Alan Fine at the Boston University Pulmonary Center studying lung regeneration, and with Dr. Richard Mulligan in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, where he studied stem cell biology and gene therapies.

Dr. Kotton returned to Boston University in 2004 to open his laboratory as an independent Principal Investigator. His laboratory has been continuously funded since 2004 by the National Institutes of Health to lead research programs focused on regenerative medicine, stem cell biology, and pulmonary developmental biology. As an educator he serves as Principal Investigator or co-Principal Investigator of a T32 training grant in Pulmonary Biology (now in its 50^th year), a TL1 training grant in regenerative medicine, and an R38 training grant “Promoting Research in Internal Medicine Residency (PRIMER)”. Dr. Kotton spends 20% of his time seeing patients: he is an attending physician in the medical intensive care unit, pulmonary consultation service, and pulmonary outpatient clinic at Boston Medical Center, and he has served, as the founding Co-Director – together with Andrew Wilson- of the Alpha-1 Center at Boston Medical Center.

Dr. Kotton and his laboratory have been recognized though numerous local, national, and international awards: he is the recipient of the American Thoracic Society’s “Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishments” (2018), the AAMC inaugural national “Research Resources Sharing Award” (2017), the Alpha-1 Foundation’s “Researcher of the Year” Award (2013), the Alpha-1 Foundation’s “Shillelagh” Award (2010), Boston University’s Graduate Medical Sciences Educator of the Year Award (2018), and the Robert Dawes Evans Senior Research Mentor Award from Boston University. He is an Allen Distinguished Investigator, a member of the NIH’s National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s Board of External Experts (BEE), and an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigators (ASCI) as well as the Association of American Physicians (AAP).