Upstate Medical University, Syracuse New York / Department of Medicine / Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism
Welcome toDadheech Stem Cell Islet Bioengineering Laboratory
ISLETS, GROWN TO WORK. MADE AT SCALE.
We turn a patient's own cells into insulin-producing islets, and we build the manufacturing science that makes those islets reproducible enough to treat people.
The protocol
Six stages, one vessel, no plates
Select a stage · Full-suspension differentiation in a PBS Vertical-Wheel bioreactor
The laboratory
A cure for diabetes is a manufacturing problem now, as much as a biology problem.
The science of making insulin-producing cells from stem cells works. What has lagged behind is producing them at the quantity, consistency and cost required to treat millions of people.
The Dadheech Stem Cell Islet Bioengineering Laboratory sits at that gap. We integrate human pluripotent stem cell biology, islet bioengineering, cell therapy and translational manufacturing to generate functional, mature human islets that can be transplanted without a lifetime of immunosuppression.
Our core platform is a full-suspension, six-stage differentiation process that runs entirely inside PBS Vertical-Wheel bioreactors — no plates, no manual aggregation, no scale-out. It has produced islets that reverse diabetes in preclinical models using cells from healthy donors, pancreatectomy patients and people living with type 1 diabetes.
Around that platform we build the rest of what a therapy needs: immune-tolerant cell products, a vascularized graft site, quality systems that hold up to regulatory scrutiny, and the genomics to understand why any individual patient's cells behave the way they do.
Programs
Four problems, worked in parallel
Each of these is a genuine barrier between where SC-islet therapy is today and a treatment a person can actually receive. We work them together because solving any one alone does not produce a therapy.
Autologous islet bioengineering
Reprogramming patient cells into GMP-compliant, stable iPSC lines and differentiating them to mature, glucose-responsive islets — a product matched to the person who receives it.
Immune tolerance without drugs
Genomic engineering and personalized cell sourcing to build islet products that survive without chronic immunosuppression, the single largest barrier to treating anyone but the sickest patients.
Vascularization and the graft niche
Co-manufactured islet-specific endothelial cells, ECM-derived interfaces and engineered transplant sites, so grafts get the oxygen and blood supply they need to survive the first two weeks.
Genomics of islet failure
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics across type 1 and type 2 donor-derived iPSC lines to resolve the heterogeneity nobody can currently explain — and to predict which lines will make good islets.
Affiliations
Research & Technology
What has to be true before a stem cell islet becomes a therapy
Four requirements: enough cells, cells that survive, cells the immune system tolerates, and a way to know in advance whether a given patient's cells will work. Our research program is organized around those four, and the manufacturing platform underneath all of them.
Program 01
Autologous iPSC-derived islet bioengineering
A patient's own cells, reprogrammed, differentiated and returned as functioning islets.
Allogeneic islet products work, but they commit the recipient to immunosuppression for life. An autologous product removes that trade-off at the source — if you can make it reliably, from any donor, at clinical scale.
We generate GMP-compliant, karyotypically stable iPSC lines from patient somatic cells and drive them through a six-stage, fully suspended differentiation to mature SC-islets. Our published platform has done this with lines from healthy donors, from pancreatectomy patients, and from people living with type 1 diabetes, with diabetes reversal demonstrated preclinically across all three.
- Matrix-free 3D reprogramming directly in Vertical-Wheel suspension, removing feeder layers and coated plates from the front of the process
- Line-to-line variability characterized rather than averaged away, so that donor heterogeneity becomes a measurable process input
- Deep-learning prediction of reprogramming success from early morphology, to cut failed lines before they consume a manufacturing slot
Program 02
Immune tolerance and hypoimmune engineering
The goal is a graft that lasts without immunosuppression — not one that lasts because the recipient is immunosuppressed.
Chronic immunosuppression is why islet transplantation, which works, is offered to only a few hundred people a year. It carries infection risk, malignancy risk and renal toxicity that most people with diabetes should not be asked to accept.
We pursue two routes in parallel. Autologous sourcing removes the allogeneic barrier but leaves autoimmune recurrence in type 1 diabetes intact. Genomic engineering of the islet product addresses both — modifying the cells so they are not seen by the immune system, and stress-hardening them against the inflammatory environment of the transplant site.
- Hypoimmune edits engineered into the iPSC line before differentiation, so every cell in the product carries them
- Autoimmune-recurrence modelling in patient-derived T1D lines, where the original disease process is still encoded in the genome
- Regulatory T cell and tolerogenic strategies developed with our transplantation collaborators
Program 03
Vascularization and the transplant niche
Most transplanted islets die in the first two weeks, before a blood supply ever reaches them.
A native islet is one of the most densely vascularized tissues in the body. A transplanted one arrives with no vasculature at all and has to survive on diffusion until the host grows vessels into it — a process that takes longer than the cells can tolerate.
We attack this from both sides. On the product side, we co-manufacture islet-specific vascular endothelial cells alongside the islets in the same bioreactor run, so the graft carries the beginnings of its own vascular network. On the recipient side, we engineer the transplant site itself, using ECM-derived interfaces and prevascularized niches that are ready to perfuse the graft on arrival.
Program 04
Genomics of β-cell failure and line heterogeneity
Two iPSC lines that look identical can produce completely different islets. We want to know why before we spend a manufacturing run finding out.
We run integrated human genetics and genomics screening on iPSC lines derived from people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, comparing them against healthy donor lines and against primary human islets. Single-cell RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics and multi-omics let us resolve the heterogeneity that bulk measurements average out.
The near-term goal is practical: identify the molecular signatures that predict differentiation competence, so line selection stops being empirical. The longer-term goal is mechanistic — defining how islet dysfunction, immune-mediated vulnerability and β-cell death actually proceed in each form of diabetes.
Technology
Platform and instrumentation
The equipment is chosen so that a process developed at bench scale transfers to a clinical run without being redesigned.
PBS Vertical-Wheel bioreactors
Development vessels through production scale, all sharing one impeller geometry. Low-shear, uniform mixing that keeps aggregates in a narrow size distribution — the property that makes suspension differentiation reproducible, and the reason a process moves between volumes intact.
BioSpherix X2 closed system
Hypoxia-capable, fully closed cell handling under continuous atmospheric control. Cells are never exposed to room air or room oxygen tension between process steps.
MERSCOPE Ultra
Single-molecule spatial transcriptomics on intact islets and graft sections, mapping identity and stress states to position within the aggregate.
Dynamic perifusion & GSIS
Glucose-stimulated insulin secretion with first- and second-phase resolution, benchmarked against primary human donor islets rather than against other stem cell products.
Leica THUNDER Imager DMi8
Whole-slide scanning and volumetric imaging of intact islets. Computational clearing removes out-of-focus haze without a confocal pinhole, so a whole aggregate can be resolved in three dimensions rather than sampled one plane at a time.
High-content ICC
Marker-resolved characterization of endocrine composition, architecture and off-target populations across every differentiation stage.
Deep learning for reprogramming
Predicting iPSC reprogramming success from early live-cell morphology, developed toward automated, human-light line generation.
This clip could not be played in your browser. Download the video
This clip could not be played in your browser. Download the video
GMP Facility & Manufacturing
UPSTATE DIABETES CURE INITIATIVESUNY CENTRE FOR ADVANCED CELL THERAPY
GMP Manufacturing Unit · SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse NY
Making one dose is research. Making the thousandth dose the same way is the therapy. This unit exists to close the distance between a differentiation protocol that works on a good day and a process that produces a defined, releasable product every time it runs.
The core capability
A 3 L bioreactor running inside a closed GMP chamber
BioSpherix X2 GMP · PBS-3 Vertical-Wheel under containment
This is the part of the facility that is genuinely unusual. Most groups run their bioreactor on an open bench and move product in and out through a biosafety cabinet. We put the vessel inside the containment.
BioSpherix X2 — closed manufacturing unit
The X2 is a linked train of sealed chambers. Incubation, processing, sampling and transfer each have their own chamber, joined by pass-through ports, and every manipulation happens through glove ports. Product never sees room air and never sees room oxygen tension.
Oxygen, carbon dioxide, chamber pressure, volatile organics, 0.5 µm particle count and temperature are each held to setpoint, alarmed, and logged continuously against the batch record. The atmosphere becomes a controlled process parameter rather than whatever the room happened to be that day.
PBS-3 Vertical-Wheel, integrated under containment
The 3 L Vertical-Wheel bioreactor is installed inside the X2 envelope rather than beside it. Feeds, samples and the final harvest all happen without ever breaching the closed system, which removes the open manipulations that are normally the highest-risk steps in a cell therapy run.
It also means the process does not have to be redesigned on the way to clinical scale. The same closed handling that governs a 0.1 L development run governs a 3 L production run.
Scale
0.1 L → 0.5 L → 3 L
Scale-up, not scale-out · one impeller geometry at every volume
The Vertical-Wheel geometry is the same in every vessel in the range. Shear stays low, mixing stays uniform, and aggregate size distribution holds as volume increases — which is why a process transfers between vessels instead of having to be re-developed at each scale.
60–100 mL working volume. Protocol optimization, media and factor screening, line qualification. Bench-scale runs that generate the design space cheaply.
300–500 mL working volume on the same universal base. Where the six-stage suspension platform was characterized end to end and shown to reverse diabetes preclinically across three donor line types.
1.8–3.0 L working volume with full bioprocess control and monitoring, installed inside the BioSpherix X2 closed chamber. The volume at which a single autologous patient dose becomes practical.
Vessels are drawn to scale by volume. The Vertical-Wheel range continues to 15 L and 80 L on the same geometry, so the ceiling above 3 L is a question of demand rather than of process redesign.
The platform
Full suspension, start to finish
Every stage — from undifferentiated iPSC expansion through to mature SC-islet — runs in suspension in the same vessel type.
Conventional protocols begin in adherent 2D culture and hand off to 3D somewhere in the middle. Each handoff is a manual step, an open manipulation, a source of variability and a place where the process cannot simply be made bigger.
Removing 2D culture entirely removes those handoffs. It also removes coated plates, feeder layers and manual aggregation from the bill of materials, which matters when every raw material has to be qualified for clinical use.
- No adherent culture, no manual aggregation, no plate-to-vessel transfer
- Aggregate formation controlled by agitation and seeding density rather than by microwell geometry
- Closed transfers between stages under continuous atmospheric control
- Scale-up by vessel volume, not by running more vessels in parallel
Daily practice
What a run actually looks like
A differentiation is not one event. It is weeks of feeding, sampling, checking and recording, done the same way every time by people who are gowned before they touch anything.
Quality and control strategy
Built to a design space, not to a recipe
We develop the process under Quality-by-Design principles aligned to ICH Q8–Q11, defining which parameters actually move product quality and how far each one can move before it does.
Critical process parameters
Product characterization & release
Documentation and traceability
Runs are executed against controlled, versioned SOPs with in-process checks recorded at each stage transition. The laboratory maintains an electronic laboratory notebook with inventory, sample repository and assay modules, so that every vessel, reagent lot and result is traceable to a single manufacturing record.
Industrial partnership
PBS Biotech
We develop and validate the SC-islet process directly on PBS Biotech Vertical-Wheel systems, working with the manufacturer on vessel configuration, perfusion intensification and the transfer path from development volumes to clinical production scale.
Interested in the manufacturing platform?
We work with academic groups, industry partners and funders on process transfer, co-development and scale-up.
Team
Principal Investigator
Nidheesh Dadheech, MSc, PhD
Principal Investigator · Assistant Professor of Medicine
Joint Assistant Professor of Pharmacology
Director, Upstate Diabetes Cure Initiative and GMP Manufacturing Facility
Dr. Dadheech is a developmental stem cell biologist and bioprocess engineering scientist with over two decades of work on generating β-cells from stem cells, and six years leading process development and manufacturing for islet cell therapy products.
Before joining SUNY Upstate he served as Senior Research Lead for Cell Therapy and Process Development at the Clinical Islet Transplant Program, University of Alberta, with Dr. James Shapiro, founder of the Edmonton Protocol for islet transplantation, where he directed GMP SC-islet production and led the process development laboratory supporting a clinical trial program. His work there established the full-suspension Vertical-Wheel platform now published in npj Regenerative Medicine, and demonstrated that suspension differentiation of iPSCs yields endocrine composition, secretory capacity and diabetes-reversal potential approaching that of primary donor islets.
At Upstate he directs the Dadheech Stem Cell Islet Bioengineering Laboratory and leads the Upstate Diabetes Cure Initiative as Director, working toward the SUNY Centre for Advanced Cell Therapy and a translational biomedical cell therapy program, with the long-term aim of bringing autologous islet manufacturing into clinical use in Central New York and the United States.
Education
Research and teaching interests
Languages
English · Hindi · Rajasthani · Gujarati
Laboratory members
Who works here
Four people cover the whole pipeline — reprogramming, differentiation, bioreactor operation, characterization and the manufacturing record. Everyone here works on the product itself, not around it.
Research Scientist · Cell Therapy & Process Development Lead
Team Lead, Dadheech Laboratory · SUNY Centre for Advanced Cell Therapy
Mehmet Zeynel Cilek, PhD
Translational scientist · two decades in stem cell biology, regenerative medicine, gene therapy and bioengineering
Dr. Cilek develops scalable, personalized stem cell-derived islet therapies for diabetes and moves them toward clinical translation. He leads the laboratory's programs in iPSC-derived islet manufacturing and process development, combining developmental biology, genomics, 3D culture and bioprocess engineering into reproducible platforms for making functional, glucose-responsive islet cells.
A central achievement of his work is a hybrid 2D/3D differentiation platform built around Vertical-Wheel bioreactor technology. It addresses the limitations that conventional culture systems run into at scale, and it is the route to consistent, high-quality islet manufacturing at clinically relevant volumes.
His current research spans genomically guided islet differentiation, automated GMP-compatible manufacturing, and transplantation strategies designed to improve graft survival and function — together, an integrated pipeline carrying patient-specific iPSC-derived islets from laboratory development toward therapeutic use.
He has served as Principal Investigator or contributing researcher on 27 research grants totalling more than $25 million, and is committed to mentoring the next generation of scientists and building the multidisciplinary teams that get cell therapies to patients.
Research Technician
Subikshaa Veluswamy Senthilkumaran, MS
Bioengineer and stem cell biologist · MS Bioengineering, University of California San Diego
Subikshaa trained in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine at UC San Diego. She is interested in understanding diabetes at its source and in using pluripotent stem cells to build clinical cell therapies that restore damaged human tissue and improve patients' lives.
Her earlier work spans brain organoid models, stem cell biology, bioprocessing and tissue engineering, including the development of tissue-engineered scaffolds and biomaterials — experience in how cells, biomaterials and engineered microenvironments can be used both to model disease and to develop regenerative therapies.
Her long-term goal is to bridge fundamental biology, engineering and regenerative medicine, translating laboratory discoveries into treatments for diseases that currently have few therapeutic options.
Graduate Student · First-year PhD
Michael Bailey, BSc
BSc Neuroscience, Maryville College, 2025
Michael joined the laboratory as a first-year PhD student. His undergraduate research investigated the effects of pesticide and herbicide exposure on neural development, and he has also worked on spinal cord research at Rutgers University and on GABAergic interneuron dysfunction in psychiatric conditions at Huntington Medical Research Institutes.
He now works on cell fate, 3D stem cell differentiation and scalable cell manufacturing — specifically the biological factors that determine whether 3D organoids and transplanted cells survive and function, with the goal of advancing cell-based therapies for diabetes and regenerative medicine.
Now recruiting
Postdoctoral Fellow
A project in SC-islet differentiation and maturation, suspension bioprocess development and scale-up, islet vascularization, or single-cell and spatial genomics of iPSC-derived islets. See Join Us for what we are looking for and how to apply.
Network
Collaborators and partners
The work spans manufacturing science, transplantation surgery, endocrinology and industry. These are the groups we build it with.
Consultancy
Scientific advisory
Dr. Dadheech consults for companies working on cell therapy and genome engineering, where the laboratory's manufacturing and differentiation experience is directly relevant.
Publications
Peer-reviewed work
Thirty-six original articles, reviews and chapters spanning islet regeneration, iPSC reprogramming, suspension bioprocessing and transplantation biology.
Featured
Full list
News & Views
What the laboratory is doing, and where it is being discussed
Coverage of the work, invited commentary, and the talks and panels where we take part in the wider conversation about scaling islet cell therapy.
In the news
Articles and coverage
Advancing suspension manufacturing of stem cell-derived islets in Vertical-Wheel bioreactors
An in-depth review of the laboratory's npj Regenerative Medicine platform paper, framing it against the central bottleneck in the field: the manufacturing science has lagged behind the cell biology, and this work addresses that gap directly.
Read at The Sugar Science →Breakthrough T1D Community Summit, Syracuse
Dr. Dadheech presented SUNY Upstate Research: Islet Regeneration from Stem Cells — A Path to Diabetes Cure to families, patients and clinicians at the Western and Central New York chapter summit.
Event details →PBS Biotech visits the UDCI GMP laboratory
Our industrial partner PBS Biotech visited the Upstate Diabetes Cure Initiative GMP facility for a laboratory tour and a working session on the Vertical-Wheel platform — vessel configuration, perfusion strategy, and the path from development volumes to production scale under closed-system containment.
Having the people who build the bioreactor standing in front of the chamber train it has to run inside is worth a great deal more than a specification exchanged by email.
First SC-islet transplantation in the Dadheech Laboratory
The laboratory carried out its first transplantation of stem cell-derived islets into a preclinical model at Upstate — the point at which a manufacturing platform stops being a culture protocol and starts being tested as a therapy.
Everything upstream of this moment is preparation. What the graft does next, over weeks and months, is the actual question.
Dr. Zeynel Cilek to speak at the 6th Annual iPSC Drug Development Summit
Dr. Mehmet Zeynel Cilek, our Cell Therapy and Process Development Team Lead, will present at the summit in Boston on 9–10 September 2026, in the session on translating iPSC research into commercial reality.
His talk covers key highlights from the laboratory: advancing autologous iPSC-derived islet cell therapy development at Upstate and the Dadheech Stem Cell Islet Bioengineering Laboratory — the hybrid 2D/3D Vertical-Wheel platform, what it takes to make the process reproducible at clinically relevant scale, and the manufacturing questions that sit between a working differentiation protocol and a therapy a patient can receive.
Upstate opens the Stem Cell Islet Bioengineering Laboratory
SUNY Upstate Medical University announced the opening of the laboratory, established to advance research toward a cure for diabetes through stem cell-derived islet manufacturing.
Upstate's Joslin Diabetes Center marks 30 years — and announces an islet regeneration institute
Among the center's newest efforts is a dedicated institute for stem cell-derived islet regeneration, aimed at growing insulin-producing islets from a patient's own stem cells and reducing or eliminating the need for insulin injections.
Read at Upstate News →Stem cell therapies for diabetes — Nature Medicine
A field-wide review co-led by Dr. Dadheech with colleagues at A*STAR Singapore and the University of Alberta, assessing where stem cell-derived islet therapy stands clinically and what remains between the current trials and broad patient access.
Read in Nature Medicine →Scale-up manufacturing of human iPSC-derived islets in Vertical-Wheel bioreactors — npj Regenerative Medicine
The laboratory's foundational platform paper: a complete six-stage, full-suspension differentiation carried out entirely in Vertical-Wheel bioreactors, with diabetes reversal demonstrated using lines from healthy donors, pancreatectomy patients and people with type 1 diabetes.
Read the paper →Researcher of the Year — Hummingbird Gala
Presented by the Alberta Diabetes Foundation, Canada, recognizing contributions to stem cell-derived islet manufacturing and diabetes cell therapy.
Webinars, panels & invited talks
Where we speak
Panels and keynotes on autologous cell therapy, manufacturing scale-up and what stem cell-derived islets mean for people living with diabetes.
Views
Positions we argue for
Scale-up beats scale-out
Running a hundred small vessels in parallel does not produce a scalable therapy. Process intensification within a single unit operation does.
3D is not an upgrade to 2D — it is a different process
Suspension culture changes iPSC phenotype, differentiation trajectory and product identity. It should be developed as its own platform, not retrofitted.
Immunosuppression is the ceiling
Until the graft survives without it, cell therapy for diabetes stays limited to the small group of patients sick enough to justify the trade.
Awards & Honors
Recognition for the work and the people doing it
Prizes are not the point of the research, but they are a fair signal that people outside the laboratory find the work credible.
Distinction
Researcher of the Year
Dr. Nidheesh Dadheech · Hummingbird Gala · Alberta Diabetes Foundation, Canada
The Alberta Diabetes Foundation names a Researcher of the Year at its annual Hummingbird Gala, recognising work judged to have moved diabetes research meaningfully forward.
The award followed the development of the full-suspension Vertical-Wheel platform for stem cell-derived islet manufacturing — the work that established that iPSC differentiation could be run end to end in a bioreactor and still yield islets with the endocrine composition, secretory capacity and diabetes-reversal potential of primary donor tissue.
It is the platform the Dadheech Laboratory at SUNY Upstate is now built on.
Congratulations
Best Oral Presentation
Dr. Zeynel Cilek · Department of Medicine Research Retreat 2026
Our Cell Therapy and Process Development Team Lead took the Best Oral Presentation award at the Department of Medicine Research Retreat.
The talk covered the laboratory's suspension differentiation platform and the process work behind it — the part of this field that rarely gets a podium, and the part that decides whether any of it reaches a patient.
The record
Honors, scholarships & awards
- Researcher of the Year — Hummingbird Gala 2025, Alberta Diabetes Foundation, Canada
- Mentorship Award — Undergraduate Research Initiative, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta
- IGNITE New Investigator Early Career Transition Award — Stem Cell Network, Canada
- Best Abstract Award (Speaker) — SC-derived Beta Cell Therapies, IPITA 2023, USA
- Best Oral Presentation — Alberta Diabetes Institute Research Day, University of Alberta
- Best Oral Presentation — Gujarat Science Congress, University of Baroda, India (from 42 presentations)
- Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship — Government of Canada, research project at Université Laval, Québec
- Young Investigator Travel Award — ISSCR Annual Meeting, Barcelona; granted by the New York Stem Cell Foundation, USA
- Young Investigator Travel Award — Keystone Symposia, Colorado; granted by the Alberta Diabetes Institute
- Young Investigator Travel Award — Till & McCulloch Meeting; granted by the Stem Cell Network, Canada
- Honorarium — Reviewer, Breakthrough T1D RFA on scale-up manufacturing technologies for SC-derived islets
- Member — American Diabetes Association
Gallery
What the work actually looks like
Cells, tissue, instruments and the room they are made in. Select any image to see it larger with the detail behind it.
All images were produced in the Dadheech Laboratory. To request a high-resolution copy for teaching or press use, please contact the laboratory.
Join Us
Come build the manufacturing science for a diabetes cure
We are a new laboratory. That means the platform is already working, the problems are already defined — and there is a great deal of room for people who want to own a piece of it.
We are looking for cell culture specialists, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students with an interest in human pluripotent stem cell biology and pancreatic differentiation or regeneration. Prior islet experience is welcome but not required; disciplined aseptic technique and genuine curiosity are.
What working here looks like
- Hands on a real manufacturing platform, not a model system — Vertical-Wheel bioreactors, closed-system handling, controlled SOPs
- Projects that run from cell biology through to process parameters and regulatory strategy
- Co-authorship and conference presentation as the default, not the exception
- A collaborative network spanning Alberta, Louisville, and industry partners in bioprocess engineering
- Mentorship structured around where you want to end up, whether that is academia, industry or clinical translation
Open positions
Current openings
Postdoctoral Fellow
OpenLead a project in one of: SC-islet differentiation and maturation; suspension bioprocess development and scale-up; islet vascularization and endothelial co-culture; or single-cell and spatial genomics of iPSC-derived islets.
You bring: PhD in stem cell biology, bioengineering, cell biology or a related field; hands-on hPSC culture; a first-author publication record.
Cell Culture Specialist / Research Technician
OpenDay-to-day iPSC maintenance and suspension culture, bioreactor setup and operation, sample processing, flow cytometry and immunostaining, and SOP-driven record keeping.
You bring: BSc or MSc with strong aseptic technique and mammalian cell culture experience. Bioreactor or GMP exposure is a plus.
PhD Students
Rotations welcomeAdmitted through the SUNY Upstate College of Graduate Studies. Rotation projects are available in differentiation biology, bioprocess engineering and islet genomics.
Apply through: the College of Graduate Studies or the Department of Pharmacology PhD programme, then contact Dr. Dadheech directly.
Undergraduate & Summer Research
By arrangementProject-based placements for undergraduates and medical students, including through the SURF summer research programme. Expect real experiments and real data.
Note: availability depends on current project load — write early.
How to apply
Email Dr. Dadheech directly with the subject line Position — Your Name. Please include a CV, a short statement of research interests and what you would want to work on here, and contact details for two or three referees.
Visiting scientists
We host visiting researchers for process development and training stays. Get in touch with a proposed scope and dates.
Industry partners
Process transfer, co-development and evaluation of bioprocess technology on our platform. We work with equipment and reagent partners directly.
Patients and families
We speak regularly at community events. If you would like the laboratory to present to your group, please write.
Support our research
Together we can deliver a cure
A person with type 1 diabetes makes several hundred decisions a day that a working pancreas would have made for them. We are building the thing that takes those decisions back.
The biology is no longer the hard part. Stem cells can be turned into insulin-producing islets, and those islets reverse diabetes in preclinical models. What stands between that result and a treatment someone can receive is manufacturing science, immune tolerance and the years of unglamorous work in between.
That work is what your support pays for.
Every gift goes to the research for a diabetes cure.
Any amount moves the work forward.
Funding
We are funded from
Department of Medicine
SUNY Upstate Medical University · Start-Up Grant
The award that established the laboratory. It bought the bioreactors, the closed-system chambers, the first reagents and the first people. Start-up funding is finite, and it is spent standing a laboratory up rather than running it indefinitely.
SUNY Research Foundation
The Research Foundation for The State University of New York
The Research Foundation administers sponsored research funding for SUNY Upstate, and holds and manages the laboratory's research accounts.
Philanthropy sits alongside these. It is the most flexible money in the laboratory, and per dollar it moves the science furthest — because it is the only funding that can be spent on an idea before that idea has proved itself.
Impact
What a gift pays for that a grant will not
Grant budgets are written a year or more before the money arrives, against aims already defended in review. Research does not always wait for that cycle.
- Preliminary data. The pilot run behind a new idea, before there is any evidence to put in an application
- An additional patient-derived line. Every donor line we characterize sharpens our picture of why some cells make good islets and others do not
- Continuity for people. Keeping a technician or trainee on staff through a gap between awards, so expertise does not walk out of the building
- A run that might fail. Bioreactor time and consumables for an experiment with real risk attached, which is where the useful answers usually are
- Trainees at the podium. Sending a student to present their own work at a national meeting
- Instrument capability. Closing the gap on a piece of equipment the programme needs sooner than a grant cycle will deliver it
Donate
Ways to give
Give online
FastestScan the QR code or follow the link to give directly. One-time and recurring gifts are both supported.
Give through the Upstate Foundation
Designated giftsGifts to Upstate are administered by the Upstate Foundation. To direct your gift to this laboratory, note the Dadheech Stem Cell Islet Bioengineering Laboratory in the designation field, or contact us and we will make sure it is routed correctly.
Major gifts, foundations and corporate partnership
Let’s talkFor larger commitments, named support, equipment gifts or research partnerships, write to Dr. Dadheech directly. We are glad to walk you through the programme, show you the laboratory, and be specific about what your support would fund.
Other ways to help
Introduce us to someone who should know about this work. Ask your employer about matching gifts. Invite the laboratory to speak to your group. Not every useful contribution is a cheque.
Questions before you give?
We will tell you plainly what the money buys and what it does not.