Matthias Lütolf

Matthias Lutolf (born in 1973, also known as Matthias Lütolf) is a Swiss bio-engineer and a professor at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne). In 2021, he became the Scientific Director for Roche's Institute for Translation Bioengineering in Basel.

Education Lutolf studied materials engineering at ETH Zurich where he graduated in 1998. In 2002, he received his PhD in biomedical engineering from ETH Zurich for his studies on cell-responsive hydrogels for tissue engineering and cell culture, in the group of Jeffrey Hubbell.

Career He completed postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Helen Blau at Stanford University, where he worked on novel cell culture approaches for blood and muscle stem cells, so called synthetic niches. In 2007, he founded his own laboratory at EPFL, where he was promoted to associate professor in 2014 and full professor in 2018. In June 2021, Lutolf became scientific director of the newly established Roche Institute for Translational Bioengineering in Basel, Switzerland.

Following the launch of Roche's Institute of Human Biology (IHB) in May 2023,

Lütolf's laboratory has also pioneered designer matrices for organoid culture, including the first chemically defined systems that support robust and reproducible growth of intestinal and other stem cell–derived organoids.

Expanding this work, his team has invented strategies for engineering organoids, integrating bioengineering principles to guide stem cell differentiation and tissue organization, yielding models with enhanced reproducibility and physiological fidelity. More recently, Lütolf has led efforts to create next-generation cancer organoid models, including “mini-colon” systems that reproduce tumour initiation, progression, and microenvironmental interactions, described in Nature Biotechnology (2024), Nature (2024),

Awards and honors In 2007, Lutolf received the European Young Investigator (EURYI) Award by the European Science Foundation. Since 2018, he is elected as member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). He serves as associate editor of The Company of Biologists' journal Development.

Publications