Engineering New Clues to Type 1 Diabetes at the Diabetes Research Institute

By: Chad Hanson | July 07, 2026 | 9 min. read |

A University of Miami Diabetes Research Institute team is combining engineering and biology to uncover how the environment surrounding immune cells may influence type 1 diabetes.

When Leonor Teles, Ph.D., arrived at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, she brought with her an engineer’s way of thinking. Her mind identifies a problem and envisions a tool to study it and reveal solutions.

That focus became the foundation of her doctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Alice Tomei, a University of Miami associate professor of biomedical engineering and researcher at the Miller School’s Diabetes Research Institute (DRI). Together, they explored an emerging question in type 1 diabetes research. Could the environment surrounding immune cells help drive the disease and could that environment eventually become a therapeutic target?

The work reflects a broader philosophy within Dr. Tomei’s lab, where engineering principles are applied to some of the biggest challenges in diabetes research.

“The engineering mindset is problem solving and building tools,” Dr. Tomei said. “We use that to address important questions and therapeutic gaps in type 1 diabetes.”

Dr. Alice Tomei, in white medical coat standing in her lab — Leonor Teles developed a biomaterial scaffold that mimics the architecture of lymph nodes.

For people living with type 1 diabetes, those challenges are significant. Current and emerging therapies often focus on controlling immune cells that mistakenly attack insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. While those approaches hold promise, researchers continue searching for ways to intervene more precisely without broadly suppressing the immune system.

Teles’ research focused on specialized structural cells that help form the framework of lymph nodes. Fibroblastic reticular cells help organize immune responses, making them an intriguing but relatively understudied target for diabetes researchers.

To study them, Teles developed a biomaterial scaffold that mimics the porous, sponge-like architecture of lymph nodes. The platform allowed researchers to recreate a more realistic tissue environment and better understand how these cells function.

“She took a project and made it her own,” Dr. Tomei said. “She came up with a new design of the scaffold and new questions based on what we were seeing.”

Building a Better Model

As the research progressed, the team noticed that fibroblastic reticular cells collected from diabetic models consistently behaved differently than cells from healthy models. The question was whether the cells themselves had become dysfunctional or whether something in their surroundings was changing their behavior.

To answer that question, Teles developed a system using decellularized lymph nodes. The process removes living cells while preserving the tissue’s underlying structure, allowing researchers to create either healthy or diabetic environments and observe how cells respond within them.

The findings suggested that the environment matters greatly.

Cells placed in a diabetic environment began to adopt disease-associated characteristics. Cells from diabetic models, meanwhile, shifted toward healthier behavior when placed in a healthy environment.

“It basically means that these cells are plastic to their environment,” Teles said. “It doesn’t matter what background they’re coming from. They will adapt to their environment.”

The discovery opens a potentially important avenue for future study. Rather than focusing exclusively on immune cells or the pancreas, researchers may also be able to investigate the extracellular matrix and lymph node environment as contributors to disease.

“What this means is we can now look at extracellular matrix targets,” Teles said. “This really opens up the avenue for new, very direct targets that are a shift of focus from just immune cells.”

Although the work remains in its early stages, the long-term goal is to identify new therapeutic targets that could allow researchers to influence disease-driving immune activity more precisely.

A Different Perspective on the Same Problem

As Teles prepares for a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University, the project is entering a new phase under doctoral student Marvin Mendoza Jr.

Unlike Teles and Dr. Tomei, whose backgrounds are rooted in engineering, Mendoza approaches the work primarily as a biologist. That difference is helping drive the research in a new direction.

Where Teles built the experimental system, Mendoza is focused on understanding the biology inside it.

Leonor Teles, Ph.D., works in a laboratory while holding a small tissue sample with forceps and positioning it over an open sample container while wearing blue protective gloves. — Marvin Mendoza Jr. is adding a biologist’s perspective to the work in Dr. Tomei’s lab.

“My question is really, what are the exact players?” Mendoza said. “What are those molecular players that actually play a role in making that change happen?”

Using bioinformatics and functional analyses, including traction force microscopy, he is studying how fibroblastic reticular cells change as disease develops and searching for the pathways that may drive those changes. His work includes investigating how healthy cells become dysfunctional and whether those changes can be prevented, reversed or redirected.

Mendoza said he was drawn to Dr. Tomei’s lab because of its interdisciplinary approach.

“I really do like the way engineers think,” he said. “To be able to answer a really important biological question, you have to look at it in different ways. You need different techniques.”

For Dr. Tomei, that combination of engineering and biology is exactly what makes the research powerful. Engineering can create new tools and models. Biology can reveal the mechanisms operating within them.

“You can’t make an engine better if you don’t understand what’s wrong,” she said.

A Shared Mission

The progression from Teles’ engineering-driven discoveries to Mendoza’s biological investigations reflects how research advances at the DRI. Researchers build upon one another’s work while contributing their own expertise and perspectives.

“Every student starts with a problem that has been identified by another student and then takes it his way,” Dr. Tomei said.

That philosophy has helped create a project that spans disciplines and generations of researchers. For patients with type 1 diabetes, the ultimate hope is that these efforts will illuminate new strategies for preventing or slowing disease progression.