Maria Cristina Nostro is a Senior Scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute (University Health Network) and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. She holds the Harry Rosen Chair in Diabetes Regenerative Medicine Research and she is a member of the Soham and Shaila Ajmera Family Transplant Centre at the Toronto General Hospital.

Her research is focused on generating functional β cells from human pluripotent stem cells.

Her group has defined critical pathways leading to the efficient generation of stem cell-derived pancreatic progenitors in vitro and recently, through the use of a proteomics approach, identified a specific marker that allows the purification of these β cell progenitors. Since 2015, Dr. Nostro has been leading a multi-investigator team aimed at developing novel transplantation approaches for Type 1 Diabetes therapy.