Wolfgang Bernhard Liedtke is a German-American neurologist and corporate executive at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, NY. Within Regeneron's Global Development, he serves as the Chair of Neurology, Psychiatry, Pain Medicine, and Sensory Systems on the Scientific Council.^[1][2][3]

In addition to his role at Regeneron, Liedtke holds positions as an adjunct professor of Neurology at Duke University in Durham, NC, and as an adjunct professor at New York University (NYU) College of Dentistry in New York, NY, where he is affiliated with the Department of Molecular Pathobiology and Dental Pain Research. He is also a Member of the NYU Pain Research Center.^[4][5][6]

Biography

Wolfgang Liedtke was born in Dortmund, Germany. He was educated in Germany in higher education and studied medicine at Ruhr University Bochum as a scholar of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes).^[7][8] He earned his MD in 1989 from the University of Cologne and his PhD in 1990 in virology from Ruhr University Bochum.^[9][3]

In 1991 and 1993, he completed residencies in Neurology at the University Hospital of Tuebingen and at the University Hospital of Essen. He then completed a residency in psychiatry at University Hospital and State Psychiatric Hospital, Essen. In 1994, he moved from Germany to the US for a neuropathology fellowship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in The Bronx, New York.^[3][8] As a Neuropathology fellow, he was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn, Germany) as a recipient of a Feodor Lynen Fellowship.^[8][10] From 1997 to 2004, Liedtke was a member of the metabolism-genetics laboratory of Howard Hughes Investigator Jeffrey M. Friedman at the Rockefeller University in New York City, NY, as a Senior Research Associate and then as a Research Assistant Professor.^[8][10]

Liedtke was selected as the Ebert Clinical Fellow-Klingenstein Fellow of the Klingenstein Fund in 2004.^[11][12] From 2004 to 2021, Liedtke held the position of scientist-physician academic professor at Duke University, where he focused on discoveries related to TRPV4.^{[13][3][14][15]} He became a full professor (with Tenure) in 2016. In 2013, he was selected as a Harrington Discovery Institute Scholar-Innovator of the Harrington Discovery Institute (Cleveland, OH), and in 2019 he presented the Blaustein Pain Lecture at Johns Hopkins Medical Center.^[16][17]

In 2020, Liedtke was selected Fellow of the Innovation-to-Impact Entrepreneurship Program of Yale University.^[9]

In April 2021, he became Chair of Neurology, Psychiatry, Pain Medicine, and Sensory Systems at Regeneron, where he is a member of the Scientific Council in Global Development.^[9][18] In November 2023, Liedtke was elected to the American Clinical and Climatological Association (Little Rock, AR), one of 250 elected physicians.^[9]

Physician practice

As a physician in the Duke Health system, he provided clinical care in his neurology and anesthesiology clinics.^[19] Liedtke treated patients suffering from refractory pain, mostly nerve pain of the trigeminal and glossopharyngeal nerve, but also oro-facial-head pain and generalized nerve pain.^[20] At Duke University, he was a Distinguished Nominee for the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award in 2017 and 2018 (Gold Foundation, Englewood Cliffs, NJ).^[9]

Since August 2021, he has been a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Facial Pain Association.^[21]

Scientific work

Liedtke first described the TRPV4 ion channel, originally named vanilloid receptor-related osmotically activated channel (VR-OAC), the first vertebrate osmotically activated ion channel.^[22]

His original report on TRPV4, published in the journal Cell, has been widely cited in the scientific community, with 1514 references as of October 2023 and with 1095 references in SCOPUS (as of June 2023).^[23]

Liedtke described TRPV4 as the first vertebrate osmoreceptor ion channel with possible wide organismal physiologic function including sensory function and pain. He then characterized TRPV4 in live animals, mice and worms. In worms, he identified TRPV4 as a functional orthologue of the ancestral TRPV channel, OSM-9, for mechanical and osmotic sensing.^[24][25]

TRPV4 was the first TRPV channel discovered outside of David Julius' research group. Liedtke characterized the role of TRPV4 in trigeminal pain as well as its role as a UVB receptor in epithelial skin cells and in itch, including in debilitating itch associated with chronic liver disease.^[14][26]

A symposium titled "20 years of TRPV4 – Exploring Science, Discovery, and Future Directions" was organized by InsideScientific, with official support from the American Physiological Society.^[27][28] Liedtke served as the Program Chair for this international conference, which covered scientific topics of mammalian physiology and human health, related to Liedtke's discovery of TRPV4 and its therapeutic impact.^[29][30] Liedtke had 104 peer-reviewed scientific publications linked to TRPV4 in SCOPUS as of June 2023. He is the most active contributor to the field, with approximately 5% of all peer-reviewed publications related to TRPV4. His TRPV4-related work has been referenced 12597 times, accounting for 14.2% of the entire TRPV4 field's citations.

In addition to his work on the identification of TRPV4, Liedtke published discoveries on gene regulation of the Kcc2/KCC2 gene, which maintains low intraneuronal chloride levels in the central nervous system (CNS), thus enabling normal CNS function in vertebrates.^[31][32] This mechanism is derailed in chronic pain, epilepsy, traumatic injury of the brain and spinal cord, likely neurodegeneration and psychoses, and possibly Long-Neuro-COVID.^[33][34]

Liedtke also contributed to the understanding of cartilage mechanobiology.^[35][36]

Entrepreneurial activities

Liedtke holds six granted US patents related to TRPV4 and is a contributor on eight additional pending patents based on TRPV4-related discoveries in his laboratory.

The following granted US patents list Liedtke as lead inventor: 9290489,^[37] 9701675,^[38] 10329265,^[39] 11014896,^[40] 11229628,^[41] 11564911.^[42] Based on these patents, Liedtke co-founded TRPblue Inc. (Durham NC). TRPblue is a biotech start-up company that received support from the Medblue Incubator (Durham, NC), NC Biotech (Research Triangle Park, NC), and the US National Institutes of Health.^[43][44]

References