Everett Meyer

Everett Meyer MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation; Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Stem Cell Transplantation, Stanford University School of Medicine 

Research Description: Dr. Meyer studies immune tolerance for transplanted human islets, achieved by hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. He studies murine pre-clinical models with a focus on T cell immunotherapy, T regulatory cell and invariant NKT cell biology and non-myeloblative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for tolerance induction. In long-standing collaborations with Dr. Seung Kim, he has developed genetic engineering to reprogram Tregulatory cells which has resulted in startling discoveries: (1) genetically engineered Tregulatory cells producing Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) are much better at preventing islet graft rejection than normal Tregulatory cells and (2) genetically engineered Tregulatory cells can alter the immune system to create new immune memory and tolerance. Those findings stem from studies supported by the Human Islet Resource Network (HIRN) and the JDRF. Dr. Meyer also has expertise in using high throughput sequencing and flow cytometry to monitor T cells responses in patients. He is principal investigator of two phase I or phase I/II clinical trials using T regulatory cells to prevent or treat graft-versus host disease. His laboratory has also begun to compare the antigen presenting cell profile of patients tolerant of their kidney graft to the antigen presenting cell profile from subjects in other groups including normal healthy controls and patients newly diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Together with several members of SDRC and Islet Core, Dr. Meyer has established a human islet auto-transplantion program at Stanford (SPIRIT). Dr. Meyer is co-leader of the ‘Immunology, Transplantation and Stem Cells in Diabetes’ Research Affinity Group of SDRC. He is also co-director of the Diabetes Immune Monitoring Core, with Dr. Maecker.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Iliopoulou BP, Hsu K, Pérez-Cruz M, Tang SW, Pang WW, Erkers T, Kambham N, Freeman GJ, Dekruyff RH, Meyer EH. Blockade of TIM-1 on the donor graft ameliorates graft-versus-host disease following hematopoietic cell transplantation. Blood Adv. 2019 Nov 12;3(21):3419-3431. doi: 10.1182/bloodadvances.2019000286. PMID: 31714958; PMCID: PMC6855109. 

  2. Erkers T, Xie BJ, Kenyon LJ, Smith B, Rieck M, Jensen KP, Ji X, Basina M, Strober S, Negrin RS, Maecker HT, Meyer EH. High-parametric evaluation of human invariant natural killer T cells to delineate heterogeneity in allo- and autoimmunity. Blood. 2020 Mar 12;135(11):814-825. doi: 10.1182/blood.2019001903. PMID: 31935280; PMCID: PMC7068034. [Cites P30] 

  3. Busque S, Scandling JD, Lowsky R, Shizuru J,… Engleman EG, Meyer E, Strober S. Mixed chimerism and acceptance of kidney transplants after immunosuppressive drug withdrawal. Sci Transl Med. 2020 Jan 29;12(528):eaax8863. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aax8863. PMID: 31996467.