Balamurugan Appakalai
Scientific Director
University of Louisville
USA
Biography
I am Balamurugan, working as an Associate Professor at the Diabetes Institute of University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. I direct the Clinical Islet cGMP facility and Islet Core and we isolate human and animal islets for basic islet biology and clinical islet cell transplantation. I am an “Islet Biologist†conducting research towards the treatment of diabetes especially pancreatic islet cell isolation, study of functional behavior of islets and transplantation since 1993. I am directing the Islet Processing Core which processes about 200 islet isolations including human (deceased donor pancreases and pancreases from patients undergoing total or completion pancreatectomy followed by islet auto-transplantation), porcine (adult and young pig donor pancreases), and non-human primate pancreases each year for the University of Minnesota Islet Transplant Program. He has over 21 years experience in diabetes research, especially pancreatic Islet Cell Biology and has performedislet isolation from more than 1000 human pancreases,1000 pig pancreases and 300 monkey pancreases.
Research Interest
Treatment of diabetes especially pancreatic islet cell isolation, study of functional behavior of islets and transplantation