Weill Cornell Medicine has a history of excellence in the field of transplant biology that continues to this day.
Transplant biology is a major strength of the Department of Surgery and our achievements include the establishment of the first kidney transplant program in New York. The institution is also home to an innovative liver transplant program, which developed several treatment procedures that have become common practice at other transplantation programs throughout the nation.
At the Department of Surgery, we continue to strive for new and better ways to improve patient outcomes. Our research in this area includes basic science efforts to identify early biomarkers for transplant rejection and to understand the immune system biology that controls tolerance versus rejection.
Other areas of research include the biology of the Islets of Langerhans, which is central to the development of diabetes and therefore plays a key role in the development of therapeutic strategies.
The Department of Surgery is also focusing on methods to build functional human islets for both transplantation therapy and the disease modeling of diabetes. We have established a strategy to direct human pluripotent stem cell differentiation toward pancreatic progenitors and endocrine progenitors in an efficient way. We currently continue to combine the directed differentiation and tissue engineering to build up functional human islets that can be used for the replacement therapy for Type-1 and Type-2 Diabetes patients.
