Anna Casu MD

Dr. Anna Casu is a medical doctor with clinical and laboratory research experience in type 1 diabetes. She is also a person living with type 1 diabetes for more than 40 years.

Dr. Casu is an Associate Investigator at the Translational Research Institute at AdventHealth in Orlando (AH TRI), Florida, and Von Weller Family Chair in Type 1 Diabetes Research. Her current research interest focuses on the relationship between the exocrine and the endocrine pancreas, with an emphasis on cell-to-cell interactions and circulating biomarkers. She is the Orlando investigator of the NCI-funded New-Onset Diabetes (NOD) study of the Chronic Pancreatitis Diabetes Pancreatic Cancer Consortium and co-investigator for the NIH/NIDDK funded Type 1 Diabetes in Acute Pancreatitis Consortium, where she serves as co-chair of the Immunology Working Group. Following her interest in biomarker development of T1D, she was recently funded by the State of Florida, Department of Health to conduct a screening program in the Orlando Area. She also contributes her expertise to several clinical trials investigating advanced technology and new treatments for type 1 diabetes. She is an investigator for the NIH-funded Impaired Awareness of Hypoglycemia international consortium to study the mechanisms and treatment of loss of hypoglycemia symptoms.

Before joining the Translational Research Institute, she served as Unit Chief – Diabetes and Islet Transplantation at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center transplant hospital in Italy and Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, based in Palermo, Italy. While at Palermo, she led the diabetes unit and coordinated both the clinical and laboratory aspects of the islet transplantation program that performed the first islet transplant in Southern Italy. Her research was funded by the European Union.

Dr. Casu obtained her medical degree and completed her residency and fellowship in endocrinology at the University of Cagliari, Sardinia, (Italy) where the second-highest incidence of type 1 diabetes in the world occurs. This resulted in publications regarding the epidemiology of the disease and its preclinical stages. She then accepted a position as a Post-Doctoral Associate, followed by Research Associate, with the Department of Immunogenetics at the University of Pittsburgh. As a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation fellow recipient, she worked on identifying new prediction markers as well as on a pre-clinical islet xenotransplantation model for the cure of type 1 diabetes.