Françoise Carlotti
Françoise Carlotti is Associate Professor and Head of the Islet Research lab.
After a M.Sc in Cellular and Molecular Biology obtained with highest honors (2000), she received a PhD fellowship from the French Ministry of Education and Research and started her PhD in the department INSERM headed by Prof. François Cuzin. In 2002, she obtained a 1-year Eurogendis fellowship (Marie Curie training program) and joined the group of Prof. Rob Hoeben at the LUMC. She completed her PhD (cum laude) from the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis early 2004. In 2005 she joined the group of Dr Hans van Dam (LUMC) supported by a Marie Curie RTN fellowship. In 2006 she was appointed as a Staff Scientist in the Virus and Stem cell Biology lab of Prof Hoeben. During that period she acquired expertise in human adult stem cells and islet cell biology.
In 2010, she joined the Islet lab of Prof. Eelco de Koning as Assistant Professor and Head of the Islet Research lab, and she became Associate Professor in 2020.
In 2020, she has been appointed as management team member of the ‘Cells, Tissues and Organs’ LUMC Innovation Research Theme dedicated to fundamental and (pre-)clinical research on regenerative medicine, disease modelling and transplantation (https://www.lumc.nl/research/research-themes/cells-tissues-organs).
In the Islet lab, we do fundamental and pre-clinical research on Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes with a focus on primary human pancreatic cells and beta-cell replacement therapy building on an active clinical islet transplantation program.
Our two main research topics are:
i) Investigating mechanisms underlying beta-cell adaptation to (patho)physiological conditions, islet cell plasticity and alterations in beta-cell identity associated with a loss of function.
ii) Regenerative medicine for diabetes: Making new insulin-producing cells from human pluripotent stem cells using GMP-compliant processes for translation to the clinic.
As PI, Françoise Carlotti obtained research funding from JDRF, the Dutch Diabetes Research Foundation, the Dutch Kidney Foundation, the DON foundation, the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes and TKI/Health Holland.
She is also a PI in Dutch consortium for regenerative medicine RegMedXB, and in the H2020 European consortia ISLET and ESPACE.
