Scholars@Duke
Berk Aykut

Berk Aykut

House Staff
Surgery

Selected Publications

Reconstitution of thymopoiesis via implantation of cryopreserved cultured thymus tissue into athymic recipients.

Journal Article Am J Transplant · November 13, 2025 Implantation of cultured allogeneic thymus tissue (CTTI) into athymic human recipients generates functional recipient-derived naïve T cells that are tolerant to the donor. Currently, CTTI is always performed with 12 to 21 days of thymus procurement to avoi ... Full text Link to item Cite

First US pediatric heart transplant using XVIVO Heart Assist Transport.

Conference JHLT Open · November 2025 We report the first US pediatric heart transplant utilizing the XVIVO Heart Assist Transport (XHAT) system for donor heart preservation. An 11-year-old recipient successfully received a heart from a 27-year-old donor using hypothermic ex vivo perfusion. Th ... Full text Link to item Cite

Pediatric heart transplant in donation after circulatory death using normothermic regional perfusion.

Journal Article J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg · October 2025 OBJECTIVE: Orthotopic heart transplant is the definitive option for pediatric patients with end-stage heart failure. Unfortunately, the greatest contributor to waitlist mortality has been a shortage of available hearts for transplant. Donation after circul ... Full text Link to item Cite

Partial heart transplant valves demonstrate growth in piglets despite prolonged cold storage.

Journal Article J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg · October 2025 BACKGROUND: Traditional heart valve replacement options lack growth potential, limiting their long-term effectiveness in pediatric patients. Partial heart transplantation is an emerging approach that offers growth-capable valves by transplanting only the v ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Partial Heart Transplant for Congenital Heart Disease.

Journal Article JAMA · September 23, 2025 IMPORTANCE: Partial heart transplant, or living valve replacement, has the potential to advance surgical management of irreparable valvular disease by providing a viable option with capacity for growth. OBJECTIVES: To describe the early experience and asse ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Partial Heart Transplantation: Early Experience With Pediatric Heart Valve Replacements That Grow.

Journal Article Circulation · May 20, 2025 Heart valve replacement in children is fraught with long-term morbidity and mortality rates, largely because conventional implants lack the capacity to grow with the child. Partial heart transplantation presents a potential solution by transplanting only s ... Full text Link to item Cite

Early single-center experience with an ex vivo organ care system in pediatric heart transplantation.

Journal Article J Heart Lung Transplant · April 2025 Pediatric heart transplantation (HTx) faces challenges such as limited donor availability and the need for complex reconstructions, particularly in patients with congenital anomalies. Ex vivo perfusion offers a promising approach to minimize graft ischemic ... Full text Link to item Cite

Perioperative Outcomes After Bioprosthetic Valve Replacement in Patients Sensitized to Alpha-Gal.

Journal Article Ann Thorac Surg Short Rep · March 2025 BACKGROUND: Alpha-gal syndrome from tick bites, due to sensitivity to alpha-gal, can cause severe allergies. Heart valve implants contain alpha-gal, yet alpha-gal syndrome screening is not standard before valve replacement. This study examines perioperativ ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Partial Heart Transplantation Promotes Organ Stewardship: Domino Hearts and Split Roots.

Journal Article Ann Thorac Surg Short Rep · March 2025 BACKGROUND: Partial heart transplantation (PHT) has emerged as a pioneering approach for treating infants with irreparable heart valve dysfunction. However, the scarcity of suitable donors presents a significant bottleneck to its widespread application. Th ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

In Vivo Feasibility and Growth of Atrioventricular Partial Heart Transplantation in a Porcine Model.

Journal Article Innovations (Phila) · 2025 OBJECTIVE: Pediatric mitral valve replacement remains a significant challenge due to the lack of growth-capable prostheses, often necessitating multiple reoperations. Partial heart transplantation (PHT) has shown promise in the semilunar position but has n ... Full text Link to item Cite

Aberrant right subclavian artery intervention can provide relief of dysphagia.

Journal Article Cardiol Young · December 2024 BACKGROUND: An aberrant right subclavian artery represents the most common aortic arch vascular anomaly. Conventional wisdom states that these anomalies do not result in dysphagia, but rather serve as "red herrings". Clearly, in the vast majority of cases, ... Full text Link to item Cite

Gut Microbial Dysbiosis and Implications in Solid Organ Transplantation.

Journal Article Biomedicines · December 2024 The gut microbiome has been shown to play a significant role in solid organ transplantation, potentially influencing graft function and patient outcomes. Dysbiosis, characterized by reduced microbial diversity and an increase in pathogenic taxa, has been l ... Full text Cite

Surgical Protocol for Partial Heart Transplantation in Growing Piglets.

Journal Article World J Pediatr Congenit Heart Surg · September 2024 Partial heart transplantation is a new approach to deliver growing heart valve implants. Partial heart transplants differ from heart transplants because only the part of the heart containing the necessary heart valve is transplanted. This allows partial he ... Full text Link to item Cite

Survival after partial heart transplantation in a piglet model.

Journal Article Sci Rep · May 29, 2024 Partial heart transplantation (PHT) is a novel surgical approach that involves transplantation of only the part of the heart containing a valve. The rationale for this approach is to deliver growing heart valve implants that reduce the need for future re-o ... Full text Link to item Cite

Semilunar valve growth and function 10 years after infant heart transplantation: Predicting long-term outcomes of partial heart transplants.

Journal Article Pediatr Transplant · May 2024 INTRODUCTION: Partial heart transplants are a new type of pediatric transplant that replace defective heart valves with the parts of matched donor hearts containing the necessary valves. Short-term outcomes of partial heart transplants are excellent, but l ... Full text Link to item Cite

Comparing Survival After Resection, Ablation, and Radiation in Small Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma.

Journal Article Ann Surg Oncol · October 2023 BACKGROUND: Hepatectomy is the cornerstone of curative-intent treatment for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC). However, in patients unable to be resected, data comparing efficacy of alternatives including thermal ablation and radiation therapy (RT) rem ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Colorectal Cancer Liver Metastases: Multimodal Therapy.

Journal Article Surg Oncol Clin N Am · January 2023 Despite a steady decline in incidence and mortality rates, colorectal cancer (CRC) remains the second most common cancer diagnosis in women and the third most common in men worldwide. Notably, the liver is recognized as the most common site of CRC metastas ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

BTLA+CD200+ B cells dictate the divergent immune landscape and immunotherapeutic resistance in metastatic vs. primary pancreatic cancer.

Journal Article Oncogene · September 2022 Response to cancer immunotherapy in primary versus metastatic disease has not been well-studied. We found primary pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is responsive to diverse immunotherapies whereas liver metastases are resistant. We discovered divergen ... Full text Open Access Cite

Intrahepatic microbes govern liver immunity by programming NKT cells.

Journal Article The Journal of clinical investigation · April 2022 The gut microbiome shapes local and systemic immunity. The liver is presumed to be a protected sterile site. As such, a hepatic microbiome has not been examined. Here, we showed a liver microbiome in mice and humans that is distinct from that of the gut an ... Full text Open Access Cite

Targeting Piezo1 unleashes innate immunity against cancer and infectious disease.

Journal Article Science immunology · August 2020 Piezo1 is a mechanosensitive ion channel that has gained recognition for its role in regulating diverse physiological processes. However, the influence of Piezo1 in inflammatory disease, including infection and tumor immunity, is not well studied. We postu ... Full text Open Access Cite

PD-L1 engagement on T cells promotes self-tolerance and suppression of neighboring macrophages and effector T cells in cancer.

Journal Article Nature immunology · April 2020 Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) ligation delimits immunogenic responses in T cells. However, the consequences of programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) ligation in T cells are uncertain. We found that T cell expression of PD-L1 in cancer was regul ... Full text Open Access Cite

Regulatory T Cells Keep Pancreatic Cancer at Bay.

Journal Article Cancer discovery · March 2020 Although CD4+ FOXP3+ T regulatory (Treg) cells are well-known mediators of immunologic tolerance, their influences in the tumor microenviroment are incompletely understood. Writing in this issue of Cancer Discovery, Zhang and c ... Full text Open Access Cite

γδ T Cells Promote Steatohepatitis by Orchestrating Innate and Adaptive Immune Programming.

Journal Article Hepatology (Baltimore, Md.) · February 2020 Background and aimsThe recruitment and activation of inflammatory cells in the liver delineates the transition from hepatic steatosis to steatohepatitis (SH).Approach and resultsWe found that in SH, γδT cells are recruited to the liver by ... Full text Open Access Cite

The fungal mycobiome promotes pancreatic oncogenesis via activation of MBL.

Journal Article Nature · October 2019 Bacterial dysbiosis accompanies carcinogenesis in malignancies such as colon and liver cancer, and has recently been implicated in the pathogenesis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA)1. However, the mycobiome has not been clearly implicate ... Full text Open Access Cite

Innate αβ T Cells Mediate Antitumor Immunity by Orchestrating Immunogenic Macrophage Programming.

Journal Article Cancer discovery · September 2019 Unconventional T-lymphocyte populations are emerging as important regulators of tumor immunity. Despite this, the role of TCRαβ+CD4-CD8-NK1.1- innate αβ T cells (iαβT) in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) ha ... Full text Open Access Cite

Targeting SYK signaling in myeloid cells protects against liver fibrosis and hepatocarcinogenesis.

Journal Article Oncogene · June 2019 Liver fibrosis and fibrosis-associated hepatocarcinogenesis are driven by chronic inflammation and are leading causes of morbidity and death worldwide. SYK signaling regulates critical processes in innate and adaptive immunity, as well as parenchymal cells ... Full text Open Access Cite

Specialized dendritic cells induce tumor-promoting IL-10+IL-17+ FoxP3neg regulatory CD4+ T cells in pancreatic carcinoma.

Journal Article Nature communications · March 2019 The drivers and the specification of CD4+ T cell differentiation in the tumor microenvironment and their contributions to tumor immunity or tolerance are incompletely understood. Using models of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), we show th ... Full text Open Access Cite

RIP1 Kinase Drives Macrophage-Mediated Adaptive Immune Tolerance in Pancreatic Cancer.

Journal Article Cancer cell · November 2018 Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is characterized by immune tolerance and immunotherapeutic resistance. We discovered upregulation of receptor-interacting serine/threonine protein kinase 1 (RIP1) in tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in PDA. To stud ... Full text Open Access Cite

Macrophages in Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis: Friend or Foe?

Journal Article EMJ Hepatology · May 31, 2018 Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a subtype of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease that is characterised by steatosis, chronic inflammation, and hepatocellular injury with or without fibrosis. The role and activation of macrophages in the pathoge ... Full text Open Access Cite

The Pancreatic Cancer Microbiome Promotes Oncogenesis by Induction of Innate and Adaptive Immune Suppression.

Journal Article Cancer discovery · April 2018 We found that the cancerous pancreas harbors a markedly more abundant microbiome compared with normal pancreas in both mice and humans, and select bacteria are differentially increased in the tumorous pancreas compared with gut. Ablation of the microbiome ... Full text Open Access Cite

EMX2 gene expression predicts liver metastasis and survival in colorectal cancer.

Journal Article BMC cancer · August 2017 BackgroundThe Empty Spiracles Homeobox (EMX-) 2 gene has been associated with regulation of growth and differentiation in neuronal development. While recent studies provide evidence that EMX2 regulates tumorigenesis of various solid tumors, its ro ... Full text Open Access Cite

NLRP3 signaling drives macrophage-induced adaptive immune suppression in pancreatic carcinoma.

Journal Article The Journal of experimental medicine · June 2017 The tumor microenvironment (TME) in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is characterized by immune tolerance, which enables disease to progress unabated by adaptive immunity. However, the drivers of this tolerogenic program are incompletely defined. In ... Full text Open Access Cite

Dectin 1 activation on macrophages by galectin 9 promotes pancreatic carcinoma and peritumoral immune tolerance.

Journal Article Nature medicine · May 2017 The progression of pancreatic oncogenesis requires immune-suppressive inflammation in cooperation with oncogenic mutations. However, the drivers of intratumoral immune tolerance are uncertain. Dectin 1 is an innate immune receptor crucial for anti-fungal i ... Full text Open Access Cite

A rare case of recurrent malignant triton tumor in a male with NF1: Case report and mini-review

Journal Article International Journal of Surgery Case Reports · January 1, 2016 Background Malignant triton tumors (MTT) represent a rare subset of tumors with rhabdomyoblastic differentiation within the heterogeneous group of malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST). Case presentation Here, we report on a case of a 25 year-ol ... Full text Open Access Cite

CD95 promotes metastatic spread via Sck in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Journal Article Cell death and differentiation · July 2015 Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been implicated in the initiation and maintenance of tumour growth as well as metastasis. Recent reports link stemness to epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in cancer. However, there is still little knowledge about the mo ... Full text Open Access Cite

Salinomycin inhibits growth of pancreatic cancer and cancer cell migration by disruption of actin stress fiber integrity.

Journal Article Cancer letters · March 2015 Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is characterized by aggressive growth, early metastasis and high resistance to chemotherapy. Salinomycin is a promising compound eliminating cancer stem cells and retarding cancer cell migration. The present study in ... Full text Open Access Cite

Partial Heart Transplant Update: Where Are We In 2025?

Journal Article Semin Thorac Cardiovasc Surg Partial heart transplantation (PHT) creates a new and innovative approach to allow for patient and disease tailored intervention with the ability to treat a larger patient base. It offers the growth capacity of a heart transplantation without the need for ... Full text Link to item Cite