Appakalai.N. Balamurugan, United States

As an “isletologist” for the past 30 years, Dr. Balamurugan’s research career has focused on advancing pancreatic islet cell isolation and transplantation for the treatment of type-I diabetes and surgery induced diabetes.  He is an international pioneer in islet cell isolation and transplantation and established advanced islet manufacturing protocols for clinical auto-, allo- and xeno-islet transplantations and performed over 2000 human islet isolations, utilizing them for clinical transplantation, and islet biology research initiatives. He has performed more than 1000 porcine islet cell isolations and utilized for various xenotransplantation studies. He has published more than 250 research articles including book chapters and serves on the editorial review boards of several journals. He has been invited nationally and internationally to give numerous presentations on his research studies.