Melena Bellin, MD, is a pediatric endocrinologist with University of Minnesota Physicians (M Physicians), the faculty practice for the University of Minnesota Medical School. The University of Minnesota Medical School is where she trained, completing both her residency and fellowship. She also now serves as a Professor for the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology and in the Department of Surgery.
Dr. Bellin’s specialty, endocrinology, focuses on the endocrine and hormone systems, often providing specialized treatment for patients with diabetes and other hormone-related conditions. The University of Minnesota Medical School is nationally recognized as one of the best places to study it, and Dr. Bellin wanted to train in Minnesota because of its variety of opportunities and service for the community.
“I wanted to train initially in the residency program here because it has a really broad exposure to both general pediatrics and a lot of subspecialties. You see a lot of patients with complicated conditions,” she explains.“You learn how to care for kids who are really, really sick, and you also learn to care for kids who are pretty healthy and just have kind of the routine sort of viral illnesses.”
Currently Dr. Bellin focuses on islet transplantation, a rare innovative therapy for diabetes that replaces the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. She first began focusing on islet transplantation during her fellowship program. The University of Minnesota Medical School provided her the opportunity to start her own research program during her fellowship, which she now continues as a practicing physician.
“I had my own research projects here as part of the fellowship, and my research was in a field called ‘islet transplantation,’ where you take the cells that produce insulin in the pancreas, and you transplant them to replace deficient insulin-producing cells.”
Dr. Bellin appreciates how the University of Minnesota helps medical students transform their careers into practice before their training is even over.
“So what happened out of all that was really amazing. While I was still a fellow and still in training, I developed this whole area of research where really no other pediatric endocrinologists were doing research with islet transplantation, and I ended up having a whole research program here of my own,” says Dr. Bellin.
Dr. Bellin’s contributions have helped advance care for patients with diabetes. “You can do donor islet transplantation for people who have type 1 diabetes, but you can also do it for people who have pancreatitis inflammation. You can isolate the islets out of that pancreas and transplant them back to try to prevent diabetes.”
When reflecting on how the University of Minnesota Medical School set her up for success in practice, Dr. Bellin recalls, “There are very few institutions where I could do the work I'm doing now, especially if I wanted to do both type one diabetes cell therapy and pancreatitis work. I could count it on my fingers, basically the number of places that I could go and successfully do what I do here.”
Dr. Bellin’s past work and research with her team has built their care for patients with M Physicians today, and it is an example of how academic medicine works. Education, training and research that faculty physicians engage in at the University of Minnesota Medical School inform their care for patients with their clinical practice, M Physicians.
“My research is focused on innovation, and that is something with the University of Minnesota that I think can be proven when you look at the track record, whether it be sort of medical devices or transplant surgery.”
For Dr. Bellin innovation is a significant focus of the academic and clinical work she and her colleagues do, all for the benefit of the Minnesotans in their care.