Dr. A. M. James Shapiro (born in Leeds, England) is a British-Canadian surgeon best known for leading the clinical team that developed the Edmonton Protocol – an islet transplant procedure for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Dr. Shapiro is Professor of Surgery, Medicine, and Surgical Oncology at the University of Alberta and the Director of the Clinical Islet Transplant Program and the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program with Alberta Health Services. Career James Shapiro obtained his medical degree from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and trained in surgery at the University of Bristol. After coming to Canada in 1993, he received training in liver transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery at the University of Alberta, and earned a PhD in Experimental Surgery. Shapiro developed a brand new approach to optimize islet cell transplant engraftment that involved a radical departure from previous practice. Of almost 300 islet transplants attempted before 1999, fewer than 10% of these worked in patients. His protocol was designed to address many of the previous shortcomings by transplanting sufficient numbers of islets into the liver by using multiple donors, and by testing a novel antirejection strategy that avoided steroids and allowed the transplanted islets to work at their best. The result became known internationally as the ‘Edmonton Protocol.’ Shapiro led the clinical team that tested his approach in seven initial patients, all of whom (100%) were able to discontinue the need for insulin injections for periods beyond a year. He was the lead author in the landmark paper published in July, 2000 that described these results. Since then, he and his team have transplanted almost 300 Canadians and have continued to refine and optimize the protocol. This treatment has been replicated many times internationally, and over 2000 patients worldwide have now received islet transplants using the backbone of his protocol. A large ‘registration’ trial conducted in Canada and the USA reported its positive findings in 2016 in the Journal Diabetes Care. Countries including England, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada have approved and funded islet transplantation as part of ‘standard of care’ for patients with brittle, difficult-to-control, forms of Type 1 diabetes. Since the development of the Edmonton Protocol, he has led or co-led three major ongoing international multicentre clinical trials to further improve islet transplantation outcomes. He leads the Edmonton team, which is the largest islet transplantation team worldwide. Shapiro also led the first-in-human stem cell