He has been a rising star at the DRI as a National Health Institute (NIH)-funded fellow through the prestigious National Research Service Award (NRSA).

He initially joined the Cell Biology and Signal Transduction lab, where the “living window” model was developed to study islet biology in the living animal.  Since then, Dr. Abdulreda has developed the “living window” model to study immune responses during diabetes development or rejection of transplanted pancreatic islets.

In addition, Dr. Abdulreda, in collaboration with other scientists at the DRI and the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, is exploring islet transplantation into the anterior chamber of the eye as a potential clinical transplantation site in the treatment of type 1 diabetes. The FDA-approved Phase I clinical trial will test this approach in a very select group of type 1 diabetes patients.