The Sanford Project

The concept for the Sanford Project is to focus on a single, pressing healthcare issue and establish a world-class research team to achieve significant progress within a reasonable time period. Through an extensive selection process which outlined specific candidate criteria, Sanford Health has chosen to attack type 1 diabetes by focusing on beta cell regeneration.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks and destroys insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. Regeneration research focuses on triggering the body to re-grow the insulin-producing beta cells that have been killed by the autoimmune response and to prevent destruction of the newly regenerated cells by the same autoimmune reaction.