Our Team

	Basic Research Team Clinical Operations Collaborators and Co-Investigators Development Diabetes and Transplant Immunobiology Islet Processing Research and Development Islet Processing Team Islet Product Assessment Marketing

David E.R. Sutherland, M.D., Ph.D., and Bernhard Hering, M.D. lead the Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation (DIIT) at the University of Minnesota.  Dr. Sutherland is recognized internationally as one of the world's leading pancreas transplant surgeons.  He has earned several of the world's most prestigious awards and honors in the field of medicine.  He has dedicated the past 30 years to research to cure diabetes.  He is dedicated to educating others and to sharing critical information that will lead to the prevention of diabetes and a simpler, more widely available cure.  Many of the doctors who trained as residents and fellows with Dr. Sutherland have gone on to develop pancreas transplant programs around the world.  Dr. Hering is an internationally recognized leader in islet cell transplantation for the treatment of diabetes.  Together, Dr. Sutherland and Dr. Hering have assembled a highly qualified team of experts from around the world. 

Researchers at the DIIT and the University of California at San Francisco achieved insulin independence in four of six patients with long-term type 1 diabetes using only one infusion of insulin-producing islet cells from a single donor pancreas.

In addition, the DIIT is one of only five centers to be funded by the National Institutes of Health to improve the safety and efficacy of islet transplants for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.