Transplantation Technologies & Research

Burkhard Tonshoff

Biography

Burkhard Tönshoff is professor of pediatrics and pediatric nephrology at the University Children’s Hospital Heidelberg, Germany. He currently holds the position of a Vice Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics I (General Pediatrics, Neuropediatrics, Metabolism, Gastroenterology, and Nephrology) and is Medical Director of the pediatric kidney transplantation program. He graduated from the Freiburg University School of Medicine, and completed a pediatric residency and fellowship at the University Children’s Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. From 1992 to 1994, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Division of Pediatric Nephrology and Department of Physiology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. His basic science research interests include the identification of growth inhibitors in the growth cartilage of children with chronic diseases. His clinical research focuses on various issues in chronic renal failure and renal transplantation, such as growth-promoting strategies including treatment with recombinant human growth hormone and studies on the pharmacokinetics, efficacy and safety of novel immunosuppressive drugs in pediatric renal transplant recipients, optimization of immunosuppressive therapy by therapeutic drug monitoring and immune monitoring, prevention of infectious and other complications after renal transplantation, and biomarker-guided minimization of immunosuppressive therapy. Since 2006, he serves as the pediatric advisor in the Eurotransplant Kidney Advisory Committee. In the year 2009 he founded the Cooperative European Paediatric Renal Transplant Initiative (CERTAIN; www.certain-registry.eu) as a multicenter research network and platform built on a novel, web-based registry. He has authored or co-authored 245 original and review articles, 78 book chapters and 6 books. Dr. Tönshoff currently serves as the President-Elect of the International Pediatric Transplant Association. Dr. Tönshoff is also a member of the European Society for Paediatric Nephrology, International Paediatric Nephrology Association, American Society of Nephrology, Endocrine Society USA, the American Society of Transplantation and the Transplantation Society. He acts as Associate Editor of the journal Pediatric Transplantation and serves on the editorial boards of Pediatric Nephrology and Therapeutic Drug Monitoring.