# BIOMATERIALS FOR STEM CELL DERIVED BETA CELL TRANSPLANTATION

> **NIH NIH R01** · GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · 2022 · $19,801

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
 Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease that can begin in childhood where the insulin-producing
cells in the pancreas are destroyed. Some of the adverse effects of T1D that follow very high blood glucose
levels are heart diseases, chronic wounds, and strokes. Individuals who suffer from T1D need to carefully monitor
and control their blood glucose levels daily to survive, and the most common method is the injection of exogenous
insulin. While this method does deliver insulin into the body and maintains blood glucose levels, the need for
daily injections can be difficult to keep up with, physiological glucose dynamics are not completely restored, and
there is a risk of hypoglycemia due to an excess of insulin. One of the most promising therapies in the past
decade has been the transplantation of allogeneic pancreatic islets from cadaveric donors. While this method
has made multiple patients be exogenous insulin-independent, this only lasts for about 5 years post-
transplantation because most of the islets have poor engraftment, patients must undergo chronic
immunosuppression, and there is limited donor supply. A strategy to provide a patient with a lifetime supply of
insulin-producing cells that will have successful engraftment and prevent the need for chronic
immunosuppression would be to deliver stem cell-derived insulin-producing cells in hydrogel carriers. Studies
using this strategy so far have been able to successfully deliver these stem cell-derived cells encapsulated in
natural polymer hydrogels such as alginate, but these cells do not fully integrate with the host, end up being
rejected, and the use of natural polymers adds the risk of batch-to-batch variability, and low tunability and
reproducibility. Synthetic polymer hydrogels, in contrast, have high tunability and reproducibility, and could ideally
be used as a cell carrier and platform to culture and differentiate stem cells. The objective of this supplemental
project is to engineer a synthetic polymer hydrogel with immobilized bioactive signals that can both direct the
differentiation of pancreatic islets derived from stem cells, as well as deliver these cells to diabetic subjects. Aim
1: Engineer synthetic hydrogels that promote in vitro 3D survival, proliferation, differentiation of human stem cell-
derived pancreatic progenitors into insulin-secreting immature β cells. Aim 2: Evaluate the ability of the
engineered β cells delivered with novel hydrogels to restore normoglycemia in immunocompromised, diabetic
mice.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10517827
- **Project number:** 3R01DK128840-01A1S1
- **Recipient organization:** GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
- **Principal Investigator:** Andres J Garcia
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $19,801
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2021-09-17 → 2026-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10517827

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10517827, BIOMATERIALS FOR STEM CELL DERIVED BETA CELL TRANSPLANTATION (3R01DK128840-01A1S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10517827. Licensed CC0.

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