VANGUARD Symposium
Date: Monday, 30 June 2025
Location: ExCel, London
Royal Victoria Dock, 1 Western Gateway, London, UK
The final project event – VANGUARD Symposium – will take place on Monday, June 30th, 2025, in London, UK, as part of the ESOT Congress 2025. We are thankful to our ESOT partners for making it possible.
The final event will include:
- VANGUARD Presentation: “Bioartificial Pancreas to Cure T1D” by Ekaterine which will take place during the ESOT session “Innovations in Tissue Engineering: Lessons and Advances” 17:45 – 18:00 BST
- Beyond VANGUARD: Translating Beta-Cell Replacement Therapies for Type 1 Diabetes into Clinical Practice Session 17:45 – 18:45 BST
- VANGUARD Booth: A dedicated project booth to showcase VANGUARD results through scientific posters, flyers, brochures, public deliverables, etc.
This symposium marks the conclusion of the EU-funded VANGUARD project and focuses on moving its innovations “from bench to bedside.” The VANGUARD consortium (2020–2025) developed a vascularized bioartificial pancreas as a new beta-cell replacement therapy vanguard-project.euvanguard-project.eu. With proof-of-concept achieved in preclinical studies, the session’s theme is continuation and clinical implementation, addressing how to scale up production, evade immune rejection, leverage xenotransplantation, and align outcomes with patient needs. Islet transplantation has already shown that restoring endogenous insulin production is possible, but due to donor scarcity and immune barriers, it remains an elite therapy accessible to only a few patients. Now, advanced therapies like stem-cell-derived islet grafts promise to overcome these limits, but realising widely accessible treatments will require tackling the “last mile” challenges of scalability, safety, affordability, and regulatory approval. This session brings together researchers, clinicians, and patient advocates to chart a collaborative roadmap for beta-cell therapy adoption across Europe. It directly aligns with ESOT’s strategic goals of fostering advanced therapy readiness, harmonized clinical pathways, and multi-stakeholder collaboration in transplantation
The VANGUARD presentation is part of the official ESOT Congress 2025 programme. To attend, please register with ESOT directly using this link.
