Frank Siebenhaar MD

Dr. Frank Siebenhaar is an Assistant Professor at the Allergie-Centrum-Charite, Department of Dermatology and Allergy, Charite - University Medicine Berlin. He is head of the allergy inpatient care unit and the mastocytosis outpatient clinic at the Department of Dermatology and Allergy. He is also the coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Mastocytosis Center Charite. His doctoral thesis “The role of mast cells in epidermal tumor development” was completed at the University of Mainz in 2004. He trained in dermatology and allergy in Berlin and Mainz, and in experimental pathology at the department of pathology, Harvard Medical School in Boston in 2007 to 2009, and attained his board certification in dermatology in 2012. His habilitation “Mast cells and mast cell-mediated diseases” was undertaken at Charite - University Medicine Berlin in 2014.

Prof. Siebenhaar’s research focuses on the biology of mast cells and the pathophysiology of mast cell-driven diseases. He has made numerous contributions to the understanding of the role of mast cells in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammatory disorders as well as in the protection from infections and tumors. His clinical emphasis is on mastocytosis, urticaria, angioedema, hereditary angioedema, pruritus, and auto-inflammatory syndromes.

Lately, Prof. Siebenhaar has been involved in translational approaches using human in vivo and ex vivo models to investigate the functions of human mast cells, mostly skin mast cells. These investigations have led, among others, to the development of the concept of autoallergy in chronic urticaria, which was critical for the clinical testing and development of anti-IgE as a novel treatment option in chronic spontaneous urticaria, a treatment that was licensed for the use in this disease in 2014. The team also built national reference centers for the investigation and treatment of urticaria, mastocytosis, hereditary angioedema, and other mast cell-driven diseases in the past years and the team performed more than 30 randomized clinical controlled trials (phase I to phase IV) since 2011.

Currently, Prof. Siebenhaar is the president of the German Competence Network on Mastocytosis and a board member of the Urticaria Network e.V. (UNEV). Among others, he is a member of the European Society for Dermatological Research (ESDR) and the European Academy for Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI). He chairs an EAACI task force on mastocytosis and co-chaired the EU COST Action BM1007: “Mast cells and basophils – targets for innovative therapies” (2011-2015). He is the author of more than 60 publications in peer-reviewed journals.