Fellows and Scholars Program

	Current Fellows and Scholars Past Fellows and Scholars

Since 1966, pancreas and islet transplant innovations have emanated from the University of Minnesota.  Since the Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation (DIIT) was formed at the University of Minnesota in 1994, it has attracted bright young postdoctoral research fellows eager to advance their knowledge of islet transplantation and then take that knowledge home to their part of the globe.

The Fellows and Scholars Program allows the DIIT to recruit and retain four medical fellows for two year timeframes. Since 2001, the Schott Foundation has generously funded the Fellows and Scholars Program with gifts totaling $20,000, helping to launch private support of this effort.  The fellows function as a team, isolating islet cells from animal and human pancreases, and performing islet transplants in experimental models of diabetes. Individually, each fellow also performs specialized research focused on improving several different aspects of islet cell transplantation. 

Past medical fellow teams have contributed significantly to the DIIT and the field of islet cell transplantation.  The most prominent result of an earlier team’s research has been the refinement of the “two-layer” method. The technique focuses on a specially developed “Hugbox” container, developed to effectively preserve a pancreas from removal to arrival at the DIIT labs, whether used for whole-organ or islet cell transplantation.  The two-layer method has doubled the preservation time of a pancreas, from 12 to 24 hours, significantly expanding precious preservation time. This method has been adopted for use with pancreases used for islet cell transplantation at the DIIT, and subsequently, other transplant centers.

Today’s fellows team is on call 24 hours a day, seven days per week.  Upon receipt of a pancreas, they work for six to ten hours isolating the islet cells. A session can be performed any time of day or night.  Cells yielded from these sessions are used for either preclinical studies (transplanted into small and large animals for research purposes) or clinical transplantation into humans.  The team has also researched several promising areas that will likely increase effectiveness in islet transplantation, develop new methods of isolating islet cells, and pave the way toward transplantation without the continued use of anti-rejection medications.