A DIABETES research project involving human skin tissue and cells has received a major funding boost from a non-animal medical research charity.

The Dr Hadwen Trust awarded £135,078 to Dr Catherine Wright, a lecturer at the Department of Life Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University and a member of the Institute for Applied Health Research's Diabetes and Biomedical Sciences research group.

The grant will fund a three-year research programme which will allow the university's skin tissue bank to continue providing human skin tissue and cells that can be used for studies related to diabetes research.

This includes issues such as wound healing, as well as the development of human stem cells - which would help to replace the need for animal experimentation.

Dr Wright said: "The funding will allow us to employ a full-time member of staff to assist the academics to run the tissue bank and develop new types of human cell models that can replace animal experiments."