Rate My Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani

Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani holds the Inaugural St Baker-Soyer Chair of Dermatology at the University of Queensland Faculty of Medicine, where he serves as Director of the Frazer Institute and leads the Experimental Dermatology Group at the Frazer Institute within the Translational Research Institute. A clinician-scientist and practising dermatologist, he earned his MD specializing in Dermatology from the Cochin-Port Royal School of Medicine at René Descartes University in Paris, France, and his PhD in Physiology and Physiopathology from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Institut Pasteur of Paris. After post-doctoral training at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, USA, where he demonstrated the contribution of fetal stem cells to tissue repair and their multipotent capacity toward the endothelial lineage, he advanced to leadership roles at UQ. He directs the Dermatology Department at Princess Alexandra Hospital, practises at Prince Charles Hospital and the Queensland Institute of Dermatology, and holds fellowships and board directorships with the Australasian College of Dermatologists and Queensland Skin and Cancer Foundation. As Past-President of the Australasian Society for Dermatology Research, Editor-in-Chief of the Australasian Journal of Dermatology, and board member of the International Society of Investigative Dermatology, he shapes national and global dermatology leadership.

His research focuses on skin biology, regenerative medicine, and skin cancer, exploring stem cell activation and inflammation in response to injury, with applications to wound healing, scarring, UV-induced photodamage, keratinocyte cancers, and melanoma progression. He leads NHMRC- and ARC-funded projects and innovative clinical trials, including IxeHeal for chronic venous ulcers, laser ablation for mutational burden reduction, and chemo-immunoprevention in transplant recipients. Key publications include 'Epidermal mutation accumulation in photodamaged skin is associated with skin cancer burden and can be targeted through ablative therapy' (Science Advances, 2023), 'Regional Variation in Epidermal Susceptibility to UV-Induced Carcinogenesis Reflects Proliferative Activity of Epidermal Progenitors' (Cell Reports, 2020), 'Endovascular progenitors infiltrate melanomas and differentiate towards a variety of vascular beds promoting tumor metastasis' (Nature Communications, 2019), and 'Sox9 and Rbpj differentially regulate endothelial to mesenchymal transition and wound scarring in murine endovascular progenitors' (Nature Communications, 2021). His pioneering work on fetal microchimerism earned the NHMRC Achievement Award (2011) and Excellence Award (2016), underscoring his impact on regenerative dermatology and oncology.