Balamurugan (Bala) Appakalai, Ph.D.

Balamurugan (Bala) Appakalai is an “Isletologist” and the Director of Islet Core at the Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation. He holds an appointment as Assistant Professor at the Department of Surgery.  He has extensive experience in islet isolation and transplantation in both humans and animals.

Bala was introduced to scientific research during his Master’s degree research project testing the blood glucose lowering effect of traditional plant extracts in diabetic animals. This led him to the selection of his Ph.D. topic in the field diabetes, focusing on isolated islets for insulin secretory dynamics and islet cell xenotransplantation. His involvement with transplanting islets began in 1993 with the establishment of a simple method of monkey islet isolation. 

He then completed his fellowship (1999-2000) in islet biology at the Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.  It was here that he focused on bioartificial pancreas transplantation at angiogenesis induced artificial sites. He also worked with “diabetic-islets” for pharmacological drug effect studies as well as normal islet physiology.

In 2001, he joined at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute in Pittsburgh, PA. Bala acquired extensive experience in transplantation and human islet isolation and porcine islet xenotransplantation.

In 2006, he joined as the Director of Clinical Islet cGMP facility at the Barbara Davis Diabetes Center in Denver and involved in human clinical islet transplantation before joining the University of Minnesota Diabetes team in 2007.

His main role as director in the pancreatic islet core facility is to coordinate the efforts of his lab personnel to ensure the best possible outcome of the islet cells used in transplantations and research. He also participates in islets isolations for clinical allo and auto-transplantation. His core isolates islets from pigs and nonhuman primates for xeno and allo transplantation studies. Rodent islets are isolated whenever necessary for different diabetes research projects.

Bala has widely published research articles in Islet Biology in internationally recognized journals including reviews and book chapters. He has also won several awards for best paper presentations in conferences. Overall, Bala has more than 14 years of experience in academic research towards the treatment of diabetes.  More specifically, he has expertise in the field of islet cell transplantation using islets isolated from humans, monkeys, pigs, and other small laboratory animals. He is a valuable addition to our already remarkable team at the diabetes institute. We look forward to the advances that his leadership will help us accomplish.

NIH Biosketch (.doc)