“The opportunity to interact regularly with colleagues who are extremely talented and very motivated and to try and make headway in terms of mechanisms to generate new beta cells has been really invigorating, informative, and inspiring.”

Dr. Leach joined the Chicago Diabetes Project in 2005 and heads research on the pancreatic progenitor project. A progenitor cell is a biological cell that can replicate a limited number of times and under the right conditions can grow and differentiate into their target tissues. Dr. Leach is working to differentiate progenitor cells into insulin-producing cells by the process of neogenesis (regeneration of biological tissue).  By studying how pancreatic progenitor cells are regulated, Dr. Leach and his team have the ability to understand how these cells function in vivo and to develop effective strategies to stimulate their proliferation and guided differentiation to become insulin-producing beta cells. This work has significant implications for the use of cell-replacement therapy in diabetes treatment, which is what makes the study of pancreatic progenitor cells a primary focus for the Chicago Diabetes Project.

• http://esgweb1.nts.jhu.edu/cellbio/dept/LeachProfile.html
• http://humangenetics.jhmi.edu/index.php/faculty/steven-leach.html