Katharina Scheibner uses human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) to model and understand human pancreas development better and aims to translate this knowledge to improve beta cell replacement therapies for type 1 diabetic patients.

Type 1 diabetes affects over 9 million people worldwide and used to be a deadly disease 100 years ago. Since then the disease has been treated by insulin injections. Although insulin therapy saves patients’ lives, they still suffer from fluctuating blood glucose levels that bear the risk of hypoglycemia, lifelong secondary complications and a shortened life span. For this reason, the transplantation of stem cell-derived human islets (SC-islets) hold great promise to cure diabetes. Although the efficiency of recent in vitro differentiation protocols improved, the SC-islets consist of not only endocrine cells but also unwanted non-endocrine cell types that could impair functionality of SC-islets and safety for patients. She and her team are specifically interested to develop new approaches to generate advanced SC-islets with improved functionality that eventually permits their transplantation into type 1 diabetic patients.  Moreover, the molecular mechanisms of human pancreas development, such as the induction and patterning of the (gut) endoderm as well as the induction of an endocrine fate, are not fully resolved. In vitro differentiation of hPSCs allows us to study these developmental processes in more detail. Therefore, another interest of her group is to unravel these mechanisms and thereby improve in vitro differentiation protocols for cell replacement therapy.

In summary, her research interests could advance cell replacement therapy and eventually a cure for type 1 diabetic patients.

Katharina did her doctoral research in Heiko Lickert´s lab focusing on endoderm development during mouse gastrulation and a novel approach to generate stem cell-derived beta cells for cell replacement therapies. After the successful completion of her PhD, she continued as a post-doctoral researcher and is now leading the Beta Cell Replacement group in Heiko´s lab.

Human pluripotent stem cellsPancreas DevelopmentBeta Cell ReplacementType 1 Diabetes