Mr. Szot manages the Clinical and Research Islet Production Core facility at UCSF. His appointment is in the division of transplant surgery and as director of the Diabetes Research Center (DRC) Islet Core. He has over twenty-five years of extensive research experience and within the past seventeen years in the field of islet isolation and transplantation in both rodent, porcine, primate, and clinical human studies. During this time, he served as the director for the UCSF Islet Production Core and is responsible for isolating human pancreatic islets for clinical transplantation and for basic research. His involvement in both allogeneic and autologous clinical islet isolation and transplantation includes a comprehensive knowledge of GMP and GTP regulations. Throughout his career, he has accumulated considerable experience in developing and utilizing important immune-based assays including diabetes, bone marrow, organ, and cellular transplantation tolerance models (multiple rodent models, flow cytometry, etc.). He has experience in conducting IND Phase I & III clinal trials for cellular- and biologics-based therapies; including the production of monoclonal antibodies (OKT3ala-ala) and allogeneic islets for clinical diabetes studies. He has also mastered important immune monitoring assays, functional islet testing and assessment, and has utilized embryonic stem cell derived insulin producing cells for several pre-clinical studies.