In the coming four years the Netherlands Diabetes Research Foundation will make a sizeable donation to research conducted at Maastricht University. The donation will go to the MERLN Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine, where assistant professor Aart van Apeldoorn and his research group are working on a new, more efficient treatment for type 1 diabetes.
In this type of diabetes, insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas are broken down by the patient’s own immune system. Apeldoorn’s group is developing a special living implant made entirely of the body’s own material, proteins and supporting cells, so that beta cells can be transplanted into the most natural environment possible. The implant will support these sensitive cells by mimicking the natural environment of the pancreas.
The donation will be managed by the Limburg University Fund/SWOL. We are overjoyed to see Netherlands Diabetes Research Foundation supporting this important research!
(Photo: the research group, with Carolin Hermanns, the PhD candidate who will carry out the project, in the centre.)