NIH and JDRF fund pancreatic research at PLID with nearly USD 1 million

Stephan Speier, Professor for Pancreatic Islet Physiology at IPI/PLID, receives for the next four years 950,000 USD financial support from international and US research funding institutions.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are using these funds to support collaborative projects between Prof. Speier's laboratory and research institutions in the US that are specifically focusing on human pancreas research. Both funded studies aim for a better understanding of type 1 diabetes (T1D) pathogenesis. The two-year JDRF project focuses primarily on the involvement of glucagon-releasing alpha cells in T1D, whereas the four-year NIH project focuses on the role of human pancreas development and maturation. Both projects and the in-depth investigation of the human pancreas are based on a novel tissue slice technology developed in the laboratory of Prof. Speier.