Cellular Therapeutics Institute

As many as 38.4 million people in the United States have diabetes.*  Of those, more than 8.7 million people may not even know they have the disease. The number is increasing every year, with approximately 28% of Americans projected to be diabetic by 2050.

A team of researchers at the Allegheny Health Network Institute of Cellular Therapeutics is working to reduce those numbers, as they conduct critical research with the hopes that their discoveries will lead to novel, safe, and effective medical breakthroughs.

The Institute, founded in 2014 by world-renowned physician-scientist Massimo Trucco, MD, was created as part of AHN's broad vision to be a regional and national leader in the field of personalized cellular therapies. Dr. Yong Fan, AHN Cancer Institute, now leads the Institute of Cellular Therapeutics Office at AGH.  

Today, the Institute pursues three major research arms:

• Technologies to prevent and treat the inflammation that underlies the clinical onset of type 1 and type 2 diabetes with the objective or preventing and reversing the disease.
  
• Cell and tissue engineering to reconfigure a patient’s immune system (white blood cells) so that it does not reject “self” and foreign transplants, including non-human tissues and organs.
  
• Clinical programs and trials aimed at facilitating the transplantation of insulin-producing cells as a more stable approach to restore normal blood sugar regulation following removal of the pancreas in chronic pancreatitis.
  

Based on, and leveraging its research discoveries, the institute is at the forefront of developing innovative therapies that are safe and adaptable to treat other disorders that share common threads inside the immune system.

To contact the institute:

Susan Schoonover
Administrative Director, AHN Cancer Institute 
Allegheny Health Network
Susan.schoonover@ahn.org