6/15/2026 Ryann Monahan
The Translational Oncology and Regenerative Medicine program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is a first-of-its-kind initiative uniquely integrating cancer and endocrine research with regenerative medicine technologies to accelerate the development of new cell therapies to treat chronic diseases like hypothyroidism and restore function long-term, essentially creating a cure for a disease that requires lifelong daily medications.
Written by Ryann Monahan
The new laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is bringing together two of the most dynamic frontiers in medicine — cancer treatment and regenerative medicine — under one roof for the first time.
Regenerative medicine is the science of repairing, replacing, or regenerating damaged cells, tissues, and organs. It represents an important shift in how healthcare approaches disease. Rather than managing symptoms of a disease indefinitely with daily medication, regenerative therapies restore the function of a damaged, failed, or missing organ with new cells.
For the millions of people living with chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, hypothyroidism, organ failure, and other disorders, regenerative medicine holds the potential to shift that paradigm from treating disease to restoring long-term health.
The Translational Oncology and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory is a unique program at Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CI MED), the world's first engineering-based college of medicine. The laboratory is led by CI MED Dean Mark Cohen, MD, a practicing surgical oncologist and endocrine surgeon whose research program spans novel cancer therapeutics, nanoparticle drug-delivery systems, and tissue engineering of functional endocrine organs.
"The Translational Oncology and Regenerative Medicine program is a first-of-its-kind initiative uniquely integrating cancer and endocrine research with regenerative medicine technologies to accelerate the development of new cell therapies that can treat a chronic disease like hypothyroidism and restore function long-term, essentially creating a CURE for a disease that requires lifelong daily medications," Cohen said.
Two frontiers under one roof
The new laboratory is the first at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign — and among very few anywhere — to bring oncology and regenerative medicine together as a unified research program.
The pairing is a natural one. Cancer treatment often damages healthy tissue in the process of defeating disease. Cancer surgery sometimes removes involved organs which can include endocrine glands (like the thyroid). Radiation can damage normal organs near a tumor. Patients who survive cancer frequently face a second challenge: the long-term effects of the treatment itself which can sometimes require daily replacement of hormones. By integrating both fields, the laboratory creates a translational research pipeline that can address cancer and other chronic diseases by developing cellular therapies to treat the disease and restore long-term function afterward.
Chitra Subramanian, a cancer researcher and director of the Translational Oncology and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, sees the program as a foundation for therapies that don't yet exist. "The new laboratory and research provide a platform for developing next-generation therapeutics, patient-derived models, and regenerative technologies while expanding access to clinical partnerships, industry collaborations, and competitive multidisciplinary funding opportunities,” Subramanian said.
Engineering organs from fat stem cells
The laboratory's most immediate research focus is on endocrine disorders, specifically hypothyroidism and hypoparathyroidism. In these conditions, the thyroid or parathyroid glands are unable to produce the daily hormones that the body depends on, either because the glands stop working or are removed during surgery (i.e., if they become cancerous).
There are over 20 million patients in the U.S. who have hypothyroidism (over 200 million worldwide) and require lifelong daily hormone replacement therapy. The problem with replacing a hormone with a daily pill is that the body may require more or less of a hormone at different times of the day or when under stress. Since the daily pill treatments only provide the same amount of drug (static therapy) with each dose, they often under-treat or over-treat the body’s needs at different times of day, leaving many patients with symptoms that can negatively affect their daily lives.
Cellular therapies are different and address this problem with new cells that can sense signals from the brain or the blood and produce exactly the right amount of hormone the body needs at any given time (dynamic therapy), thereby preventing symptoms from occurring.
The research team has developed the first-in-the-world process that could eliminate lifelong dependence on thyroid medication. The process isolates adipose-derived stem cells (stem cells derived from fat tissue) from the patient’s own fat cells and transforms them into functional thyroid cells that can be implanted back into the patient to restore normal thyroid hormone function for the long term. If successful, this would be the first permanent cure for a chronic endocrine condition.
"Five years from now, I hope a student entering this laboratory will see patient-specific thyroid and parathyroid tissues being engineered through largely automated platforms and moving toward first-in-human clinical trials," Subramanian said. "What is impossible today — replacing lifelong hormone dependence with regenerated, functional tissue — will become a clinical reality."
At the intersection of engineering and medicine
The laboratory's home is at the Beckman Institute, one of the country's premier interdisciplinary research environments. The new Translational Oncology and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory (TORM) facility includes a self-enclosed, fully sterile clean-room facility where investigators will process new cellular therapies and 3D-printed structures that can be used in clinical trials.
The clean room will serve as the university’s first Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) facility. GMP refers to regulations enforced by regulatory bodies like the Food and Drug Administration to ensure that pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and dietary supplements are safely manufactured, rigorously controlled, and consistently meet strict quality standards throughout their production lifecycle.
The sterile clean room will house a special automated production biofoundry that will process the autologous stem cells and convert them into tiny three-dimensional endocrine tissue cultures (endocrine organoids) or scaffolds that can then be implanted or injected into patients in the operating room or clinic. This facility is an important resource for the medical school and the campus, enabling researchers to bring new cellular therapies and scaffolds into clinical human trials.
In addition to tissue engineering, the research team’s work includes novel cancer drug compounds that target chaperone proteins (proteins that help other proteins fold and function correctly), nanoparticle drug-delivery systems for cancer treatment and bone regeneration, repurposing existing drugs as novel cancer therapies, and building new organ-on-a chip and organoid models that will help unlock the key signals and proteins that drive thyroid-eye disease as well as cancer cell-immune cell interactions in breast cancer, head and neck cancer, liver cancer, melanoma, adrenal cancer, and colon cancer.
"Investing in this first-of-its-kind Translational Oncology and Regenerative Medicine laboratory positions CI MED at the forefront of one of the fastest-growing areas of biomedical science. It also provides a critically important translational resource for the campus to stay competitive in this rapidly evolving landscape so that investigators can fully translate new discoveries and therapies into the clinic to help patients here in Urbana-Champaign, across Illinois, and around the world," Cohen said.
A global network for healthcare innovation
The TORM laboratory is an innovative and important part of a bigger research initiative in the college of medicine. Connecting translational medical research across the campus and around the world is a key initiative of college’s research mission. Through CI MED's Global Consortium of Innovation and Engineering in Medicine, an international network of over 70 medical and engineering schools across six continents, CI MED is connecting researchers, clinicians, and engineers around the world to its talented faculty, staff, students, and research programs. Through this international collaborative, which also includes leading biomedical and biotechnology industry partners, government agencies, foundations, and philanthropists, we are all uniting around one critically important shared goal: breaking down barriers to solve the hardest problems in healthcare on a global scale.
"Ultimately, this is about solving some of the most challenging problems in medicine and making sure the discoveries we make here reach the patients who need them, from Urbana-Champaign, across Illinois, the nation, and around the world," Cohen said.
Editor's note: Photos accompanying this article were taken by Virgil Ward.