Dr. Qi trained as a physician and surgeon in China then completed a Ph.D. in encapsulated islet transplantation at the Kyoto University, Japan.  He joined the University of Illinois at Chicago islet team in May 2005 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.  Dr. Qi is a master of human islet isolation and assessment of quality. He is also experienced in rodent islet transplantation and is a fully trained surgeon with capabilities of performing all the transplant surgeries. He is currently conducting a pre-clinical study of transplantation of microencapsulated human islets in non-human primate models.

Since joining the Chicago Diabetes Project in 2005.  Dr. Qi has been a key member of working on Islet Encapsulation and has led the current work on encapsulated islet transplant being performed at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The goal of the Encapsulation Program is to find a way to encapsulate islets in a gel-like bead, which masks the islet from the body’s immune system but still allows for insulin and glucose to pass through, allowing the normal regulation of patient blood glucose to return.  In a normal islet transplant, a patient must be placed on medications, which suppress their immune system but also may have side effects, or the body will reject the transplanted islets. If successful, working encapsulated islets will enable the next generation of transplantation and allow patients to be transplanted without the need for drugs to suppress a person’s immune system.  This would be a major step toward a cell-based, functional cure for Type 1 diabetes.

Dr. Qi’s work has been critical in the development of a working capsule.  He has led the efforts in transplanting encapsulated islets in a large animal model with the goal of demonstrating this technique can be done safely and effectively.  This work is ongoing and has shown great promise.  The hope is that this technique can be used with human islets in human patients as soon as possible.