Bio

Kristin Abraham is a NIH NIDDK Program Director in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases. Her interests are the role of the immune response in metabolic dysfunction and type 2 Diabetes, and projects that develop and validate the utility of new animal models for basic and preclinical research in diabetes, endocrinology and metabolic diseases.

Bio

Mark Anderson is an Endocrinologist and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on examining the genetic control of autoimmune diseases to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms by which immune tolerance is broken. Current studies in the lab are directed at further understanding the relative contribution of specialized Aire-expressing cells to immune tolerance in multiple autoimmune disease models.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_manderson?hilite=Mark+S.+Anderson

Projects

• Modeling Autoimmune Pathogenesis and Beta Cell Destruction by T1D Immune Systems
• Using Human Stem Cell-derived Thymic Epithelium to Remodel T1D Immune Tolerance

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Mark+S.+Anderson

Bio

Lucas Armitage first participated in the HIRN while as a graduate student in the Wallet & Brusko Labs at the University of Florida. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Russ Lab at the University of Colorado Denver.

Projects

• Genetic Regulation of Human Beta Cell Destruction

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Lucas+Armitage

Bio

Guillermo Arreaza-Rubin is a NIH NIDDK Program Director in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases. His interests are in diabetes and endocrine disease bioengineering and glucose sensing.

Bio

Michael Brehm is an Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine and Co-Director of the Humanized Mouse Core Facility at UMass Chan Medical School. He works with these unique animal models of human immune responses to investigate approaches to downregulate as well as activate the human immune system for treatments of type 1 diabetes (T1D) and cancer. Dr. Brehm studies human beta cells from individuals with type 1 diabetes in a real-life setting as they interact with intact T1D immune systems.

Projects

• Humanized Mouse Avatars for T1D

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Michael+Brehm

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Todd Brusko is a Professor at Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine and the scientific director at University of Florida Diabetes Institute (UFDI). The research aims of Dr. Brusko’s academic lab are centrally themed around understanding the mechanisms by which the immune system maintains a state of control, often referred to as immunological tolerance and understanding how genetic risk variants and age influence this process, as well as identifying pathway defects in individuals who develop autoimmune diseases. These studies have focused primarily on genes impacting key checkpoints in T cell activation, including T cell receptor (TCR) signaling, co-stimulation, and the IL-2 signaling pathway. His laboratory is involved a number of ongoing team science initiatives including an NIH-NIAID P01 grant, NIH Director’s Initiative – Human BioMolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP), Brehm Coalition, and the JDRF biomarker working group and autoimmunity working group.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_tbrusko?hilite=todd+brusko

Projects

• Genetic Regulation of Human Beta Cell Destruction
• Islet-reactive TCR clones in humanized mice generated with type 1 diabetes patient vs. healthy control hematopoietic stem cells
• Characterization of in silico Reconstruction of TCRs for Modeling Autoreactive T cells in T1D
• Engineering a Human Microphysiological System for the Characterization of Islet-Immune Interactions

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=todd+brusko

Bio

Remi Creusot is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and an Investigator within the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology and the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center. His research interests revolve around the pathogenesis and prevention of Type 1 Diabetes.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_rcreusot?hilite=Remi+Creusot

Projects

• Modeling Autoimmune Pathogenesis and Beta Cell Destruction by T1D Immune Systems

Bio

George Daley is Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. His research seeks to translate insights in stem cell biology into improved therapies for genetic and malignant diseases. His laboratory has pioneered human cell culture-based and murine models of human blood disease and cancer.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_gdaley?hilite=George+Daley

Projects

• Humanized Mouse Avatars for T1D

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=George+Daley

Bio

Nichole Danzl is an Associate Research Scientist at Columbia University Medical Center. Her research studies for optimization of the PI mouse model and implements these advances into the basic paired T1D versus Healthy Control comparative experiments. She also leads the in vivo functional testing of ES and iPS derivatives to make human islets and a human thymus from the hematopoietic stem cell donor.

Lab:

https://hirnetwork.org/about/participants#short-profile-megan-sykes-md

Projects

• Mice with Autologous Human T1D-Derived Immune Systems and iPSC-Derived Beta Cells

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Nichole+Danzl

Bio

Teresa DiLorenzo is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He research focuses on autoimmune diseases and autoantigens; immunopathogenesis of type 1 diabetes; humanized disease models; immunomodulatory therapies.

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Teresa+DiLorenzo

Bio

Leonardo Ferreira is a HIRN Emerging Leader Award Recipient and an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina. His research focuses on phenomenon of immune tolerance, his long term goal is to control how the immune system defines self and non-self. Such knowledge will allow the design and development of powerful new engineered immune cell therapies to fight autoimmune disease, cancer, and aging.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-leonardo-m-r-ferreira

Projects

• Dissecting Chimeric Antigen Receptor Function in Human Regulatory T Cells

Bio

Robin Goland is a Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Columbia University, and directs the patient care and clinical research programs at the Berrie Diabetes Center.

Projects

• Mice with Autologous Human T1D-Derived Immune Systems and iPSC-Derived Beta Cells
• Modeling Autoimmune Pathogenesis and Beta Cell Destruction by T1D Immune Systems

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Robin+Goland

Bio

Dale Greiner is the Chair in Biomedical Research and Professor of Molecular Medicine and Co-Director of the Diabetes Center of Excellence at UMass Chan Medical School. His research focuses on the development and use of a unique mouse model, engrafted with functional human cells and tissues. His work has generated high interest in the biomedical research community for use as a preclinical model for the investigation of human diabetes, cancer, infectious disease, regenerative medicine and autoimmunity.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_dgreiner?hilite=Dale+Greiner

Projects

• Humanized Mouse Avatars for T1D

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Dale+Greiner

Bio

Dale Greiner is a Professor of Molecular Medicine and Co-Director of the Diabetes Center of Excellence at UMass Chan Medical School. He has led basic and clinical research exploring the pathophysiology underlying diabetes. Dr. Harlan conducts clinical trials to test new therapies and explain human biology as it relates to diabetes and its treatment. His current research focuses on exploring beta cell biology and the anti-beta cell immune response underlying type 1 diabetes.

Projects

• Human Islet-Infiltrating T cell Biology: Reactivity, Structure and Function
• Humanized Mouse Avatars for T1D

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=David+Harlan

Bio

Matthias Hebrok is an Professor in Diabetes Research and Director of the Diabetes Center at the University of California, San Francisco. His research focuses on the mechanisms that underlie mammalian pancreas organogenesis and pancreatic diseases, including diabetes and pancreatic cancer. His laboratory has made seminal contributions to our understanding of how embryonic signals control the fetal development of the pancreas and its insulin-producing beta cells. His recent work has implemented the information gained from these studies to generate functional beta cells from human stem cell populations for cell therapy purposes.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_mhebrok?hilite=Matthias+Hebrok

Projects

• Modeling Autoimmune Pathogenesis and Beta Cell Destruction by T1D Immune Systems
• Using Human Stem Cell-derived Thymic Epithelium to Remodel T1D Immune Tolerance

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Matthias+Hebrok

Bio

Dirk Homann is a physician and immunologist/virologist in Berlin, Boston, Paris and La Jolla, CA. His research focuses on the development, adaptation and optimization of therapeutic strategies that effectively curtail (autoimmunity) or embellish (infectious disease) T cell responses with prophylactic and/or curative intent. Dr. Homann has expanded his research program to encompass a broader context of pancreatic islet cell biology and histopathology in human T1D, and he has launched multiple collaborative efforts to better leverage complementary expert knowledge, unique technology access and more effective overall implementation of research strategies.

Projects

• HPAP T2D: Human Pancreas Analysis Program (Vanderbilt Univ.)
• Human Islet-Infiltrating T cell Biology: Reactivity, Structure and Function
• Exploiting the power of CyTOF/Mass Cytometry (MC) to elucidate the complex interactions of islet and immune cells in human type 1 diabetes pancreata

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Dirk+Homann

Bio

Eddie James is a HIRN New Investigator and a Principal Investigator at Benaroya Research Institute. His research involves applying tetramers to identify the chemical patters recognized by T cells in desirable protective immune responses directed against viruses (such as tetanus and HPV) and in undesirable destructive immune responses directed against self or therapeutic proteins (including GAD, insulin, and Factor VIII).

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/profile-ejames

Projects

• HLA multimer based characterization of Islet Resident CD4+ T Cells that Target Beta Cell Epitopes and Neo-epitopes

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Eddie+James

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Alok Joglekar is a Gateway Award Recipient and an Assistant Research Professor of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh. His research aims to examine the shifting antigenic landscape of anti-tumor T cell responses, determine the fundamental rules of TCR-pMHC interactions, and to investigate novel immunotherapies to autoimmune diseases.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-alok-joglekar

Projects

• Identification of the Cognate Epitopes of Autoreactive T Cells in T1D

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Sally Kent is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the UMass Chan Medical School. My research focuses on the area of the autoimmune response in human T1D: in particular, T cell responses in the periphery, in spleen and pancreatic lymph nodes and in islet-infiltrating lymphocytes from subjects with T1D, at-risk for T1D and from controls.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_skent?hilite=Sally+Kent

Projects

• Human Islet-Infiltrating T cell Biology: Reactivity, Structure and Function
• Humanized Mouse Avatars for T1D
• Characterization of in silico Reconstruction of TCRs for Modeling Autoreactive T cells in T1D

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Sally+Kent

Bio

Bayou Liu is a Gateway Award Recipient and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Utah. His research focuses on autoimmune diseases (e.g., type I diabetes) via understanding self-antigen recognition by the immune system.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator-profile-baoyu-liu

Projects

• On the Plasticity of Beta-cell Antigen Recognition by Diabetogenic CD8 T cells

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Baoyu+Liu

Bio

Rene Maehr is an Associate Professor in Molecular Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School. His research focuses on investigating how normal differentiation of the thymic epithelial cell lineage is regulated, and recapitulating that process with pluripotent stem cells.

Projects

• Humanized Mouse Avatars for T1D

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Rene+Maehr

Bio

Mohsen Khosravi Maharlooei is an Associate Research Scientist at the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology. His research is focused in "immune tolerance", specifically basic and translational researches in the fields of autoimmunity, transplantation and cancer.

Lab:

https://hirnetwork.org/about/participants#short-profile-megan-sykes-md

Projects

• Mice with Autologous Human T1D-Derived Immune Systems and iPSC-Derived Beta Cells

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=mohsen+khosravi+maharlooei

Bio

Clayton Mathews is a Professor of Pathology, Immunology, and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Florida. His studies seek to improve our collective understanding on the means by which type 1 diabetes develops, both in humans and in mouse models of the disease. His efforts are extremely novel in that while the majority of researchers addressing the notion of how the disease develops focus on identifying defects in cells of the immune system.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_cmathews?hilite=Clayton+Mathews

Projects

• Defining Islet Heterogeneity Using Single Islet Transcriptomics
• Genetic Regulation of Human Beta Cell Destruction
• Exploiting the power of CyTOF/Mass Cytometry (MC) to elucidate the complex interactions of islet and immune cells in human type 1 diabetes pancreata
• Regulatory Networks and Biomarkers of Beta-cell Dysfunction and Apoptosis
• Engineering a Human Microphysiological System for the Characterization of Islet-Immune Interactions

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Clayton+Mathews

Bio

Douglas A. Melton is a Professor at Harvard University, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His current research interests include pancreatic developmental biology and the directed differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, particularly in pertinence to type 1 diabetes.

Projects

• Biomarkers for Diabetes using Stem Cell-derived Beta Cells
• Humanized Mouse Avatars for T1D
• Islet on a Chip

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Douglas+Melton

Bio

Audrey Parent is a CMAI co-Investigator and a member of the Trans-Network Committee (TNC). She is Assistant Adjunct Professor and her research is focused on immune tolerance with a particular interest in the thymus.

Lab:

https://hirnetwork.org/about/participants#short-profile-mark-s-anderson-md-phd

Projects

• Modeling Autoimmune Pathogenesis and Beta Cell Destruction by T1D Immune Systems

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Audrey+Parent

Bio

Kole Roybal is an Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. His research utilizes tools of synthetic and chemical biology to enhance the therapeutic potential of engineered immune cells. He also studies the logic of natural cellular signaling systems, and the underlying principles of cellular communication and collective cell behavior during an immune response.

Projects

• Therapeutic Targeting of the Human Islet Environment

Bio

Leonard Shultz is a Professor at the Jackson Laboratory. His research leverages immunodeficient mouse models for translational studies on human hematopoiesis, immunity, autoimmunity, infectious diseases, diabetes, regenerative medicine and cancer.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_lshultz?hilite=Leonard+Shultz

Projects

• Humanized Mouse Avatars for T1D

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Leonard+Shultz

Bio

Lawrence Stern is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the UMass Chan Medical School. His research interest is in the biochemical processes that underlie cellular recognition and signaling. His lab concentrates on the immune system, because of its intrinsic importance to human health and disease, and because of its treasure of biochemical mechanisms by which cells communicate with their environment and with each other.

Projects

• Human Islet-Infiltrating T cell Biology: Reactivity, Structure and Function

Bio

Megan Sykes is a Professor of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology & Immunology and Surgical Sciences (in Surgery) and Director, Columbia Center for Translational Immunology. Her research focus is on hematopoietic cell transplantation, organ allograft tolerance induction, xenotransplantation tolerance and Type 1 diabetes. The Sykes lab has pioneered minimal conditioning approaches for using HCT to achieve allograft tolerance.

Projects

• Islet-reactive TCR clones in humanized mice generated with type 1 diabetes patient vs. healthy control hematopoietic stem cells
• Mice with Autologous Human T1D-Derived Immune Systems and iPSC-Derived Beta Cells
• Modeling Autoimmune Pathogenesis and Beta Cell Destruction by T1D Immune Systems

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Megan+Sykes

Bio

Qizhi Tang is a Professor of Transplant Surgery and the Director, Transplantation Research Laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on translating knowledge on mechanisms of immune tolerance into novel therapeutics for treating autoimmune diabetes and preventing transplant rejection.

Projects

• Tregs as Vehicles for Targeted Delivery of Therapeutic Payload to Human Islets
• Therapeutic Targeting of the Human Islet Environment

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/qizhi-tang-28a0a412/

Bio

Roland Tisch is a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine. His research focuses on the investigation of mechanisms regulating autoimmune recognition and responses to self-proteins, and the development of “vaccines” to prevent and/or treat T1D, in addition to establishing tolerance for islet transplants.

Bio

Matthias von Herrath is a Professor at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology and Vice President, Novo Nordisk Research. His expertise and main strength is working at the interface of experimental research to interpret and refine early phase I/II clinical trials in order to optimize strategies for phase 3 trials and drug approval.