SEMINAR: Toward regenerative therapies to diabetes: strong so far but challenge ahead

Associate Professor Fang-Xu Jiang was trained as a medical doctor in China and is now Head of the Islet Cell Development Program, at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. He pioneered, during his PhD studies, male germ stem cell transplantation. For this contribution, he won The European Academy of Andrology Prize and USA Hamilton Thorne Research Prize in 1996.

After the completion of his PhD, he dedicated himself to finding a cure for insulin-dependent diabetes, a pandemic chronic metabolic disease worldwide. Over 10 years at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, he was the first to develop a defined serum-free, low-cell density in vitro differentiation system containing the basement membrane glycoprotein lamin-1 for the differentiation of insulin-producing cells.

After approximately 20 years of painstaking work, his team has successfully generated proof-of-concept data for several strategies towards regenerative therapies for diabetes. He is guest professor of Xi'an Jiaotong University and China Medical University.