inflammatory events leading to autoimmune Diabetes

Here we investigate inflammatory events initiating the development of type-1 diabetes and cellular events promoting disease progression. Therefore we have recently established that transplantation of pancreatic islets to the ACE and longitudinally imaging by 2-Photon microscopy can be used to follow the migration of single cells in islet grafts (Schmidt-Christensen et al., Diabetologia 2013). Together with Theo Lasser ´s group at EPFL in Lausanne we describe a further developed labelfree technique (Berclaz et. al, Diabetologia 2016). By introducing a novel label-free approach, it is now possible to visualize and follow the same mouse and human islets of Langerhans, their structure and early indicators of disease progression like inflammation and changing vasculature repeatedly and over a long period of time.