Description of Project
The Northern California JDRF Center of Excellence (NorCAL COE) is an alliance of nine T1D researchers at two leading biomedical research institutions in Northern California, UCSF and Stanford University with the mission of advancing novel therapies for T1D. We focus on the two frontiers of therapeutic development for T1D: repairing immune dysfunction to induce durable disease remission in at-risk and new-onset T1D patients and enabling efficient immunosuppression-free stem cell-derive beta cell replacement to restore physiological control of glucose in patients with long-standing T1D.
Advancing in these therapeutic areas requires deep insights in T1D pathogenesis and transplant rejection and novel technologies to translate new knowledge into therapies. We have thus formed a collaborative team with complementary collaborative expertise in immunology, stem cell biology, and beta cell biology. In the past four years during the first round of NorCAL COE funding, our team used a three-pronged approach that combines mechanistic investigations, technological innovations, and translational research to advance new curative therapies for T1D.
In the next round of COE funding, we will build on the progress we have made thus far to address knowledge gaps in the inception, progression, and control of autoimmunity in T1D and the unmet clinical challenge of promoting immune tolerance and efficient beta cell replacement therapy in T1D. We propose three projects in three thematic areas of basic investigations on T1D pathogenesis, translational research to develop cell therapies to promote immune tolerance, and stem cell engineering to advance beta cell replacement therapy.