Rebecca Craig-Schapiro
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Type 1 diabetes destroys the cells that make insulin. One promising treatment is to transplant islets, the small clusters of insulin-producing beta cells found in the pancreas.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
Physiology
- Topics
type 1 diabetes
islet transplantation
beta cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2031
What they work on
- Assess how selective, conditional loss of NKX2-3, a transcription factor that marks islet-specific endothelial cells, in pancreatic blood vessel cells affects islet function.
- Test whether forcing NKX2-3 expression in human umbilical vein endothelial cells improves durable engraftment of islets transplanted into the subcutaneous space under the skin.
- Determine how NKX2-3 steers macrophage polarization, the shift of these immune cells toward repair-promoting states, to drive regenerative, anti-fibrotic inflammatory responses in the pancreas.
More about the research
Many transplanted islets die, however. Patients often need large numbers of costly islets, sometimes several transplants, and many still do not stay insulin-free in the long run. One reason is that isolating islets causes the loss of islet-specific endothelial cells (ISECs), the specialized cells that line the islets' blood vessels. These cells form a supportive vascular niche and release signals that keep beta cells healthy.
Why it matters
People with type 1 diabetes who receive islet transplants often lose many of the transplanted cells. Engineering blood vessel cells that support islets could allow fewer islets to survive and work for longer. It could also make placing islets under the skin a practical alternative to infusing them into the liver, moving toward a more durable treatment for diabetes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Hirotake Komatsu
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Build human islet organoids about 5 mm thick by layering parylene microcapillary mesh that carries oxygen from flowing culture medium, testing whether a dynamic culture system keeps the organoid core alive past the usual diffusion limit.
Shahin Rafii
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify transcription factors that give endothelial cells organ-specific identities by growing ETV2-engineered R-VECs and stem-cell-derived iVECs with heart, lung and blood organoids or in injured mice, then using RNA profiling and motif discovery.
Minseok Lee
Cornell University, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether holding PD-L1/CTLA-4Ig-expressing engineered mesenchymal stromal cells (immune-calming 'nurse' cells) next to islets in an electrospun device boosts local immune tolerance in mice.
The school
Weill Medical College of Cornell University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 59 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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