Email

bissig@bcm.edu

Positions

Associate Professor

Molecular and Cellular Biology
Center for Cell and Gene Therapy
Baylor College of Medicine

Member

Texas Medical Center Digestive Diseases Center (DDC)
Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center (DLDCCC)
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas United States

Addresses

Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology (Office)

Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine Center
Houston, TX 77030
United States

Education

MD from School of Medicine, University of Bern

01/1996 - Bern, Switzerland

PhD from School of Medicine, University of Bern

01/2000 - Bern, Switzerland

Clinical Fellowship at University Hospital Bern

01/2005 - Bern, Switzerland

Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology

Postdoctoral Fellowship at Salk Institute for Biological Studies

02/2011 - La Jolla, California

Professional Interests

• Genome engineering in the liver
• Metabolic liver disease
• Human liver chimeric mice
• Liver cancer
• Hepatitis B virus
• Cell based therapy for liver disease

Professional Statement

We are interested in translating basic science breakthroughs into therapeutic approaches for liver disorders. Our research is therefore best described as from “bench to bedside”. We are not focused on one liver disorder in particular but our interest ranges from liver cancer to viral hepatitis to metabolic liver disorders.

Basic science is often poorly translated into the clinic due to lack of experimental animal models for human disease. Indeed, metabolic pathways differ significantly across the animal kingdom. Therefore, we spend considerable effort generating new in vivo systems for primary and diseased human hepatocytes.

Our therapeutic strategies include new concepts and biologics. The advent of CRISPR/Cas9 technology has generated enormous excitement throughout the many fields of biology and biomedical research, though its broad therapeutic application has been stymied by lack of a feasible approach for genome editing that obviates its chief risks. We recently developed a therapeutic genome editing approach, called metabolic pathway reprogramming, that couples the power of CRISPR/Cas9 technology with a strategy from pharmacology, namely, inhibition of an enzymatic pathway rather than direct editing of a disease-causing gene. We have demonstrated the efficacy of this approach using CRISPR/Cas9 to convert the fatal type I tyrosinemia into benign type III tyrosinemia in mice.

Websites

Selected Publications

• Barzi M, Pankowicz FP, Zorman B, Liu X, Legras X, Yang D, Borowiak M, Bissig-Choisat B, Sumazin P, Li F, Bissig KD. "A novel humanized mouse lacking murine P450 oxidoreductase for studying human drug metabolism.." Nat Commun. 2017 Jun 28;39:s41467-017. Pubmed PMID: 28659616
• Pankowicz FP, Jarrett KE, Lagor WR, Bissig KD "CRISPR/Cas9: at the cutting edge of hepatology." Gut. 2017 Jul;66(7):1329-1340. Pubmed PMID: 28487442
• Pankowicz FP, Barzi M, Legras X, Hubert L, Mi T, Tomolonis JA, Ravishankar M, Sun Q, Yang D, Borowiak M, Sumazin P, Elsea SH, Bissig-Choisat B, Bissig KD. "Reprogramming metabolic pathways in vivo with CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to treat hereditary tyrosinaemia.." Nat Commun. 2016 Aug 30;7:12642. Pubmed PMID: 27572891
• Bissig KD, Paust S, Barzi M "Liver is liver and blood is blood, and finally the twain have met.." J Hepatol.. 2016 Aug;65(2):245-8. Pubmed PMID: 27221221