Department of Diabetes Immunology

The Department of Diabetes Immunobiology at the Arthur Riggs Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute focuses on understanding the causes of type 1 diabetes and developing novel therapies that can prevent and reverse diabetes. Established in late 2022, our department is growing, and City of Hope® is recruiting additional faculty members.

The Samuel Rahbar Endowed Chair in Diabetes & Drug Discovery, Alberto Pugliese, M.D., heads the department and serves as director of the Wanek Family Project for Type 1 Diabetes at City of Hope. Dr. Pugliese is also executive co-director of the Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes (nPOD), a major collaborative research project focusing on the study of the pancreas as the target organ of the disease. Since its inception in 2007, nPOD has supported several hundred projects and investigators worldwide. Through nPOD, Dr. Pugliese has spearheaded numerous collaborative studies and implemented Team Science approaches. Since 2015, Dr. Pugliese has received the Helmsley Charitable Trust George S. Eisenbarth nPOD Award for Team Science, from which scientists worldwide can receive funding for innovative studies of the pancreas with type 1 diabetes.

Major research lines in the department include the design and conduct of clinical trials for type 1 diabetes, in the context of the Wanek Family Project for Type 1 Diabetes and the study of recurrent diabetes in pancreas transplant recipients in collaboration with the University of Miami, and the discovery and validation of novel biomarkers. Another key focus is the study of the pancreas with type 1 diabetes; to study the causes of type 1 diabetes directly in the target organ. The department is also home to the nPOD West Coast site. The department recognizes the importance of studying type 1 diabetes in terms of autoimmunity and the role the insulin-producing pancreatic β-cells play in their responses and interactions with immune cells in type 1 diabetes.

Our scientists have received grant support from the National Institutes of Health, Breakthrough T1D (formerly JDRF), the Helmsley Charitable Trust and the American Diabetes Association.