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Tissue engineering and cell therapies involve the use of living cells, manipulated through their extracellular environment or genetically, to develop biological substitutes for implantation into the body with the purpose of replacing, repairing, or regenerating diseased tissues.  The Sambanis Laboratory is working towards developing key, enabling technologies for a living pancreatic substitute for treatment of insulin-dependent diabetes.   Two major therapeutic approaches are considered: one based on non-autologous cells (cells not derived from the same patient) and one based on potentially autologous cells (cells from the same individual).  Problems that are both specific to each approach and common to the two approaches are being investigated.