On the other end was Dr. Piotr Witkowski, Director of the Pancreatic and Islet Transplant Program at UChicago Medicine — a call she had been waiting months to receive.
“Are you healthy?” he asked.
“Yes,” Hand replied. “I’m healthy.”
“Okay,” he said. “We have a donor match.”
Within days, Hand would be on a flight to Chicago for an experimental procedure that could fundamentally change her life with type 1 diabetes.
For decades, donor-derived islet cell transplantation has held promise as a functional cure for type 1 diabetes (T1D). But a persistent challenge remained: how to protect transplanted cells without suppressing the entire immune system.
Now, researchers believe a new targeted therapy, Tegoprubart (a monoclonal anti-CD40L antibody developed by Eledon Pharmaceuticals Inc.), may finally be changing that script.
In the ongoing Eledon Clinical Trial at UChicago Medicine, donor-derived islet cells are transplanted into the liver to restore insulin production, while Tegoprubart helps protect those cells without the toxic side effects of traditional immunosuppressant drugs.
People with T1D are now seeing firsthand what this breakthrough pilot study means — through the lived experience of trial participants, not just clinical data.
T1D Exchange sat down with Katie Beth Hand, participant No. 9 in the study, who received her transplant on January 13, 2026. One week after transplant, she stopped basal insulin entirely. By March, she was off insulin completely.
What followed, she said, was more than just improved glucose.
“I was exhausted on a physical, mental, and emotional level,” said Hand, recalling a difficult night filled with lows and rebound highs.
“I literally thought to myself, ‘There's got to be something better than this.’ So I got online and started Googling clinical trials.”
Like many people with T1D, Hand lived with a fear of hypoglycemia. “Often, I’d let my blood sugar run higher than I should’ve because I lived in constant fear of going low,” she explained.
Her husband, who is a firefighter, works 48-hour shifts. “When he was at the firehouse, I was in continual fear I was going to die in my sleep, and my kids would find me,” said Hand.
Adding, “At the end of the day, when people ask, ‘What would make you risk doing an unknown clinical trial?’ — That’s why.”
“I found the UChicago Medicine Eledon study online and applied,” said Hand. “At first, there were a couple of phone interviews, and then a flight to Chicago for a week of extensive testing to see if I would qualify.”
Last summer, Hand received notification that she was officially accepted into the study. Then, in October, she returned to Chicago and received Thymoglobulin, a rabbit-derived immunosuppressant that’s required before being placed on the transplant list.
“It's a 12-hour IV infusion given in the hospital,” she said. “For me, it was the worst part of the entire transplant process.” The number given depends on bloodwork — Hand had three.
“The infusion started at 6 p.m., and by 2 a.m., I woke up feeling like I had the flu — fever, chills, and vomiting,” Hand recalled. “After that, I went back to sleep, and thankfully, I didn't have any other issues.”
Unlike Tegoprubart, which targets a specific immune pathway, Thymoglobulin acts as a traditional broad immunosuppressant.
“I chose to be extra cautious so I didn’t get sick, because it suppressed my whole immune system,” she said.
After returning to Arkansas, her blood work was monitored remotely every two weeks. Once her levels were within the desired range, she was placed on the transplant list and started Myfortic, another immunosuppressive medication, the week of Thanksgiving.
Hand was also prescribed antibiotic, antiviral, and antifungal medications pre-procedure, which she’s expected to stay on for three to six months post-transplant.
Then came the waiting.
For Hand — a mother of four — this meant staying healthy through cold and flu season, which became a challenge in its own right.
“I wore a mask because I didn't want to get a call that my match was ready, but I couldn't have the transplant because I was sick,” she said.
Despite the precautions her family took, illness moved relentlessly throughout the household. “When I tell you, we've never been sicker, I mean, we literally have never been sicker.”
“My 7-year-old had strep three times, my 12-year-old had flu A, my 13-year-old had flu B, and my husband had COVID. We really put my immune system through the wringer,” said Hand, who ended up getting flu A, but avoiding everything else.
“When people hear the word ‘transplant,’ they usually think of a major solid organ surgery,” said Hand. “That’s not at all what an islet cell transplant is like.”
“If you gave me the option of having a cavity filled or an islet cell transplant,” she joked, “I’d choose an islet cell transplant every time.”
Before the transplant itself, Hand was already in-hospital receiving a Tegoprubart infusion ahead of the next day's scheduled procedure on January 13, 2026.
Unlike a traditional organ transplant, the islet cell transplant was relatively quick and minimally invasive, performed under local anesthesia by an interventional radiologist.
“They took me down to a procedure room, made a tiny — embarrassingly small — incision between my ribs, snaked a tube in, and infused the donor-derived islet cells through the portal vein into my liver.”
“Then, they pulled the tube out, put a Band-Aid on the site, and sent me back to my hospital room,” said Hand. “The whole thing took less than an hour.”
She remained hospitalized for a few days afterward for monitoring and continued Tegoprubart infusions. But physically, she said, recovery was remarkably easy.
“The upside of the Tegoprubart is that I’ve had zero side effects from it, which is amazing,” she said.
After discharge, she spent the weekend in Chicago with her husband and youngest son before flying home to Arkansas.
“I felt fantastic. I wasn't sick, I wasn't sore, and as I said, I had a Band-Aid on.” The scar itself has become something of a running joke.
“The one question I always get is, ‘Can I see your scar?’” she said. “And I'm like, ‘Yeah — prepare to be disappointed.’”
“It's the lamest scar you've ever seen,” she added. “It looks like a freckle.”
The study involves two interconnected pieces: donor-derived islet cells and the immune therapy designed to protect them.
The transplanted cells — infused into the liver through the portal vein —contain both insulin-producing beta cells and glucagon-producing alpha cells. Together, they help regulate blood glucose levels naturally.
Islet transplantation itself is not new. The challenge has been preventing immune rejection without relying on traditional immunosuppressive drugs like tacrolimus, which can damage kidneys and even harm the transplanted islet cells.
Tegoprubart works differently.
“Tegoprubart is very, very targeted,” explained Hand. “It protects those islets without suppressing the entire immune system.”
For study participants, the difference has been remarkable.
“I don’t feel bad. I don’t have headaches or any of the side effects people typically associate with immunosuppressants,” said Hand, who now receives Tegoprubart infusions every three weeks.
One week after transplant, she returned to Chicago for follow-up blood work and another Tegoprubart infusion.
That’s when Dr. Witkowski told her the best news: She should stop taking all basal insulin.
The moment felt surreal. “I switched to multiple daily injections a few years before the trial, because I was going through burnout,” she said.
“When he said to ‘stop taking basal,’ that was a whole insulin pen that I basically threw away — which was pretty crazy.”
Over the next six weeks, the transplant team closely monitored her shared Dexcom data and lab work while the transplanted cells matured.
At first, she used small supplemental insulin doses with meals and followed a lower-carb approach to avoid stressing the newly implanted cells.
But learning to trust her body again took some adjustment.
“I remember close after transplant, having eaten more carbs than I thought I would — and my glucose spiked, so I took more insulin, but that made me low,” said Hand.
“Dr. Witkowski called me and said, ‘Stop panicking. If you go high, don't treat it. Your body is fixing this.”
And by March 3rd — less than two months after transplant — she was completely off insulin.
Now she says her glucose typically ranges from 70 to 100 mg/dL, with post-meal rises that quickly return to range.
“The most life-changing part hasn’t been the highs,” she said. “It’s not having the lows.”
Although Hand said her 7-year-old would tell you, the only downside is “Mommy doesn't carry snacks all the time now.” That’s because for the first time in 13 years, she leaves the house carrying only her phone and keys.
While the physical recovery from transplant was relatively straightforward for Hand, the emotional adjustment came later.
One of the hardest moments, she said, was removing her CGM for the first time.
“When I went in for a follow-up, the whole research team came in cheering and saying, 'You’re done — you can take your CGM off!” Hand recalled. “I just couldn’t do it. I cried at the thought.”
For over a decade, it represented safety and survival, said Hand, who removed her CGM later, when it expired — and hasn’t worn one since.
Even now, despite in-range glucose levels and A1Cs, Hand occasionally checks her blood sugar on a glucometer “just to make sure.”
For Hand, the most profound change hasn’t been medical or technological. What changed most, she said, is the absence of the constant cognitive load of managing T1D and the internal dialogue that once came with it.
“My head is so quiet now,” she said. “I’ve been running a mental algorithm for all these years without even realizing it.”
But relief wasn’t the only emotion that followed. Similar to other transplant recipients, she’s found herself grappling with the reality that her life-changing moment came alongside another family’s devastating loss.
“While I thought, ‘This is the best day of my life,’ another family was having the worst day of theirs.”
One of the more emotionally complex parts, she says, is writing a letter to her donor’s family through the transplant program.
“What do you say to people who made that choice?” she asked, tearfully. “I’ve really been working through that on an emotional level.”
“There’s absolutely a mental health aspect to becoming a transplant recipient,” said Hand. The real transformation isn’t just metabolic — It’s psychological, too.
Despite her positive results so far, Hand remains cautious about how she frames the study for others.
“I try to be very careful when I talk about this — especially with kids,” she said. “What they see is a lady who got to take her insulin pump off.”
“While it's very exciting and a huge step forward, it won’t be here tomorrow.”
Researchers still face major hurdles, including scalability, affordability, coverage, and islet cell accessibility.
While Hand received human donor islets, scientists are also working on other approaches using lab-grown or stem cell-derived islets that could eventually make transplantation available to far more people with T1D.
At the same time, future cohorts of the Eledon study are expected to expand into broader populations, including people with T1D and kidney disease — individuals who have historically been excluded from islet transplantation because traditional immunosuppressants can worsen kidney disease.
For many people living with T1D, Hand represents something unimaginable: life without exogenous insulin.
But long-term durability, broader scalability, cost, and eventual FDA approval remain unanswered questions.
As the science evolves and regulatory reclassification and approval may still be years away, Hand believes something meaningful has already changed: For the first time, the future feels tangible for people living with T1D.