Infectious Diseases Grand Rounds with UArizona’s Dr. Klearchos Papas on ‘Cell-Based Therapies for Diabetes’

This University of Arizona event is sponsored by the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine, UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson. It is open to the public, particularly community physicians and other interested health-care professionals. Please join us as we welcome the presenter:

Klearchos K. Papas, PhD
Professor, Department of Surgery, and Director, Institute for Cellular Transplantation, UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson
Co-Founder Procyon Technologies LLC, Tucson

Topic:

“Cell-Based Therapies for the Treatment of Diabetes”

Infectious Diseases Grand Rounds
Tuesday, May 28, 2024 | 8-9 a.m.
College of Medicine – Tucson, Room 5120, or via Zoom (see below for link/password)

About the Presenter:           
Dr. Papas holds bachelor's and master's degrees and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a focus on tissue engineering. He completed his postdoc training at Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Before joining the UArizona in 2011, he served on the faculty at the University of Minnesota (2003-11), where he held leadership positions as associate director of the Islet Transplant Program, director of Islet Processing Research and Development and director of the Islet Quality Assurance Core in the Schulze Diabetes Institute. He also has held joint research positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Chemical Engineering, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) Center for Islet Transplantation at Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Yale University (1999-2003). Dr. Papas is immediate past-president (2023–25), served as president (2021-23), and has been on the council since 2011 of the Cell Transplant and Regenerative Medicine Society (formerly Cell Transplantation Society). He also has served on the editorial board of the journals Cell Transplantation (2009-23) and Frontiers in Bioengineering & Biotechnology: Biomaterials (2013-22). He continues as a section editor for both journals and serves on the editorial boards of CellR4, Xenotransplantation and Cell Medicine as well.

Dr. Papas has devoted his research career to the application of engineering principles and the development of enabling technologies in the fields of cell therapy and tissue engineering with a focus on the treatment of diabetes. He has studied and utilized properties of insulin-secreting tissue (especially as they relate to oxygen demand and supply) and their relationship to viability and function (potency) in the context cell therapies for diabetes with the objective of improving cost-effectiveness, availability, practicality and clinical outcomes of this approach. His research team is actively involved in research for improvements in post-transplant cell engraftment and function, especially with tissue engineered constructs and macro-encapsulation devices, by enhancing nutrient delivery and in particular oxygenation. Dr. Papas’ team demonstrated that enhanced oxygen delivery to such devices in vivo can: 1) enhance beta cell viability and functionality, especially at high cell loadings, 2) dramatically reduce the marginal dose of cells required to reverse diabetes, and 3) thus dramatically reduce the necessary device size required to reverse diabetes in a human. As part of the effort to enhance nutrient delivery to tissue engineered constructs, his team has also examined the impact of surface vascularization of immunoisolation devices and significant improvements in insulin release kinetics through the vascularized devices.

Learn more

Flyer for this event:  id-grand-rounds_5.28.2024_klearchos-papas-phd_flyer.pdf

For questions or accommodations that may be necessary, please contact the Event Coordinator at least three days in advance of event.