Camillo Ricordi, M.D. is the Stacy Joy Goodman Professor of Surgery, Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Miami (UM), Florida, where he serves as Director of the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI; www.diabetesresearch.org) and the Cell Transplant Program. Dr. Ricordi also served as Responsible Head of the Human Cell Processing Facility (1993-2014), an NIH funded cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices) facility that has been providing Human Cell Products for research and clinical applications at UM, in Florida and worldwide since 1993. Dr. Ricordi has also served as Co-Director of the Executive Office of Research Leadership (2001-2003) as Senior Associate Dean for Research (2003-2006) and chaired the Dean’s Research Cabinet (2006-2012) at the UM Miller School of Medicine.
In 2015 Dr. Ricordi led the UM – UHealth – JMH team that performed the first successful transplant of a bioengineered endocrine pancreas implanted within a 3D bioactive resorbable scaffold in the abdominal cavity of a recipient with a severe form of Type 1 Diabetes (BioHUB Project). The patient has been able to discontinue insulin treatment since the first month post-transplant with excellent metabolic control. This unprecedented success resulted in renewed enthusiasm for the possibility to engineer this transplant site with additional strategies to avoid the requirements for recipient immunosuppression, and has resulted in additional key collaborative efforts, from Harvard to Stanford and with other leading international centers. The same year Dr. Ricordi launched the DRI Translational Fast Track Program to Reverse Autoimmunity and Induce Immune Tolerance, which he co-leads with Dr. Jay Skyler, in collaboration with several key UM investigators, from the SCCC, the DRI, the Departments of Medicine, Surgery, Biomedical Engineering, Microbiology and Immunology, Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology and Epidemiology.
Dr. Ricordi was president of the Cell Transplant Society (1992-94), co-founder and chairman of the National Diabetes Research Coalition (Chairman 1997), co-founder and president (1999-2001) of the International Association for Pancreas and Islet Transplantation (IPITA), and a member of the council of The Transplantation Society (2002-2008). He also served on the council of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (2000-2002), on the National Institutes of Health (NIH-NIAID) Expert Panel on clinical approaches for tolerance induction, on the FDA Biologic Response Modifiers Advisory Committee, on the NIH/NCRR Islet Cell Resources (ICRs) Executive Committee, on the NIH-NIDDK Strategic Planning Committee and on the NIH-NIAID Expert Panel on Transplantation Research. He is currently serving as Chairperson of the Clinical Islet Transplant Consortium (NIDDK-NIAID). He has also been serving on several NIH study sections, including Surgery, Anesthesia and Trauma, the General Clinical Research Centers, Small Business Innovative Research, the Immune Tolerance Network, in addition to serving as a reviewer for several international funding agencies.
Dr. Ricordi has received numerous honors and awards, including the 2001 Nessim Habif World Prize in Surgery (University of Geneva) for developing a technology that significantly contributed to the advancement of a surgical field