Learn how Houston Methodist is leading medicine by leveraging the latest advances in cell therapy to target unmet needs. The event features five elite guest speakers, a poster session and prizes awarded to top presenters.

Camillo Ricordi, MD, FNAI, is 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 Chief of the Division of Cellular Transplantation, Department of Surgery, Director of the Cell Transplant Center and Director Emeritus of the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI).

Ricordi has been serving as Medical Director of the NIH funded cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices) Advanced Human Cell and Biologic Product Manufacturing Facility since 1993, that has been providing an invaluable service to the international community, by providing training programs and distributing human tissues, cells and other biologic products, for research and clinical applications at in the US and worldwide.

Acknowledged by his peers as one of the world's leading scientists in diabetes cure-focused research, cell transplantation and regenerative medicine, Ricordi is well-known for inventing the technology that made it possible to isolate large numbers of islet cells (insulin-producing cells) from the human pancreas, shortly after his medical degree at the University of Milan, while working at San Raffaele Hospital (HSR) with Prof. Guido Pozza and Prof. Valerio Di Carlo.  The method was eventually validated at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, where he served as HIN Trainee.  After moving back to HSR, to set up the islet cell processing facility and to start clinical trials in Milan, he was eventually recruited at the University of Pittsburgh Transplant Institute, where he led the team that performed the first series of successful clinical islet allotransplants of donor purified islets obtained with this transformational method, reversing diabetes after their intra-hepatic infusion, in what was defined as a form of “organ engineering”, transforming the liver into a “double organ” capable to perform both the hepatic and pancreatic endocrine functions. Within months, HSR started islet transplant trials also in Milan, performing the first successful transplant in Europe. The procedure is now used by centers performing clinical islet transplants worldwide. Since 1993, Ricordi moved to the University of Miami to head the Diabetes Research Institute and Cell Transplant Center for the past three decades and established the DRI at HSR in Milan, as one of the first centers of the DRI Federation, together with the DRI in Edmonton, Canada. Several other centers subsequently joined the Federation, worldwide.

In addition to diabetes cure-focused research, Ricordi’s interests include Healthspan Medicine and regenerative biotherapeutic strategies, to prevent or treat chronic degenerative disease conditions, and to prolong healthy lifespan (Healthspan).

Ricordi led the team that performed the first successful transplants of a bioengineered endocrine pancreas implanted within a 3D bioactive resorbable scaffold in the abdominal cavity of recipients with a severe form of Type 1 Diabetes. He also served for over a decade as principal investigator and chair of the steering committee of the first successful, NIH funded, FDA Phase 3 multicenter trial on islet transplantation in Type 1 Diabetes. 

He has worked for decades to develop strategies for transplantation without chronic recipient immunosuppression, and for the reversal of autoimmune disease conditions. 

In 2021, Ricordi led the international team that successfully completed the first FDA approved double blind, randomized controlled trial to treat severe cases of COVID-19 ARDS, with mesenchymal stromal cell infusions that resulted in 91% patient survival at one month post treatment, compared to 42% survival in the control group. 

He has also launched the program www.Fit4Healthspan.org to help the general population become resistant to severe viral infections through nutrition, fitness and selected protective molecules. These strategies are now also studied to prevent or halt progression of autoimmune diseases and age-related chronic degenerative conditions, to prolong healthy lifespan (Healthspan).

He is currently serving as Chairperson of the international Steering Committee and UM-DRI Principal Investigator of two stem cell derived islet transplant clinical trials: Vertex; VX-880 (with recipient immunosuppression), and VX-264 (with an immune-isolating device without anti-rejection drugs.

Ricordi is also working with Eledon Pharmaceuticals and the University of Chicago for the first-in-human trial of anti-CD40L (co-stimulatory blockade) in islet transplantation, to replace Tacrolimus immunosuppression (first patient transplanted in April 2024).

In addition, as Director of the Cell Transplant Center at the DRI, he is overseeing the IND enabling studies, towards the first trial of islet transplantation within a tolerance inducing microgel (iTolerance, Inc.), without chronic recipient immunosuppression (proof of concept trial planned for 2025).

He was co-founding scientist of Lipogems International, currently completing two pre-market approval clinical trials in osteo-arthritis,  and co-founded AION Healthspan, Inc., a regenerative medicine company whose first clinical trial for reversal of CKD and Diabetes Nephropathy was recently allowed to proceed by the FDA (IND approved on June 5, 2024).

Ricordi was founding president of the Cell Transplant Society and of the International Association for Pancreas and Islet Transplantation (IPITA) and served on the board of The Transplantation Society and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons. He served on the FDA Biologic Response Modifiers Advisory Committee, and has been serving on several NIH study sections, in addition to serving as an advisor/reviewer of several international funding agencies.

He has received numerous honors and awards, including the 2001 World Prize in Surgery (University of Geneva) for developing a technology that significantly contributed to the advancement of a surgical field.  He was awarded the 2002 Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award by the American Diabetes Association and in 2009 was Knighted by the President of the Republic of Italy. In 2010 he was the only surgeon and one of the few ever inducted into the Association of American Physicians (AAP), and in 2018 he was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors USA for contributing outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society. 

Ricordi ranked as #1 world expert in transplantation of insulin producing cells for treatment of diabetes, for the decade 2008-2018 (expertscape), among over 4,000 surgeons, physicians and scientists evaluated, and was appointed to the Supreme Council of Health (Consiglio Superiore di Sanita’) by the Ministry of Health of Italy. He has also served on several editorial boards and is currently Editor-in-Chief of European Reviews for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences. 

In 2023 he was awarded the Leonardo Da Vinci Award (co-shared with Nobel Prize winners Yamanaka and Semenza - Taormina TaoBuk) and the Venice Golden Lion Award.  

Ricordi also serves as President of the Board of ISMETT (Mediterranean Institute of Transplantation and Advanced Therapies and was appointed President of Fondazione Ri.MED by the Italian Prime Minister, for the 2013-2017 term, successfully completing the partnership with ISMETT for the creation of an unprecedented biotechnology center linked to ISMETT to foster clinical translation of novel therapeutics (http://www.fondazionerimed.eu/).

Ricordi was founding president of The Cure Alliance and Chairman of the Diabetes Research Institute Federation, coordinating and promoting cure focused research at leading institutions worldwide. He also serves as consultant and/or on the board of advisors of several non-profit foundations, government and federal agencies, venture capital and investment funds, as well as pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporations.

Ricordi contributed over 1,170 publications, that received over 60,000 citations, has 117 H-index and 28 patents awarded.

In 2022 he published the Oscar Bestseller Mondadori book “IL CODICE DELLA LONGEVITÀ SANA” now available also in its English edition: “THE HEALTHSPAN CODE” (Amazon.com).  In 2024 he published “RIVOLUZIONE TERAPEUTICA” (Mondadori and Amazon.it), whose English edition “THERAPEUTIC REVOLUTION” (Amazon.com) was released in January 2025.

Presented by Ann Kimball and John W. Johnson Center for Cellular Therapeutics