Bio

Dr. Justin Annes specializes in the treatment of hereditary endocrine disorders with particular focus on neuroendocrine-related conditions. He developed the Stanford Endocrine Genetics Clinic in 2012 which is part of the interdisciplinary Stanford Hypertension Center and Stanford Neuroendocrine Tumor Program. Additionally, he has had a medical practice focused on hereditary endocrine disease since 2008.

Projects

• Developing a Platform Technology for β-Cell-Targeted Drug Delivery

Bio

Dana Avrahami-Tzfati is scientist at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel.

Projects

• Epigenetic Rejuvenation of Human Beta-Cells
• The Role of Senescent Beta Cells in Type 1 Diabetes and Type 2 Diabetes
• The Role of Beta Cell Senescence in the Pathogenesis of Diabetes

Bio

Olivier Blondel is a NIH NIDDK Program Director in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases. His interests lie in research that focuses on endocrine signaling, stem cell biology, organ development, regenerative medicine and biomarker discovery as it relates to diabetes (type 1 and type 2) and metabolic diseases, particularly in combination with experimental approaches such as large-scale genomics, synthetic biology, bioengineering, epigenetics, nuclear organization of mammalian genomes, chromatin biology, genome editing, gene therapy

Bio

Marcela Brissova is an Research Professor of Medicine and Director of the Islet Procurement & Analysis Core at Vanderbilt University. She is also the Director of the Human Islet Phenotyping Program (HIPP) of IIDP. Her research focuses on the biology of pancreatic islets and pancreas and islet development, especially the development of pancreatic islet vasculature and innervation and their role in regulation of pancreatic islet function.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_brissova?hilite=Marcela+Brissova

Projects

• Integrative Analysis of Multiomic Signatures and Cellular Function in Human Pancreas Across Developmental Timeline at Single-cell Spatial Resolution
• In situ Analysis of Functional Endocrine, Vascular, and Immune Cell Interactions During Early Postnatal Development of the Human Pancreas
• High-Resolution Analysis of Juvenile Human Pancreas Maturation
• HPAP T1D: Human Pancreas Analysis Program for Type 1 Diabetes
• Integrated Program for Human Pancreas Procurement and Analysis
• HPAP T2D: Human Pancreas Analysis Program (Vanderbilt Univ.)
• Molecular Mechanisms of Physiologic Beta Cell Growth in Juvenile Human Pancreas
• PanKbase: A Community Hub for Integrated Pancreas Knowledge

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/Contributor/Index/marcela_brissova@hirnetwork.org

Bio

Peter Buchwald is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Director of the Drug Discovery Program at the Diabetes Research Institute. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals focused on the physicochemical and metabolic aspects of drug design and drug action, as well as on computer-aided quantitative modeling. Dr. Buchwald is directing the DRI’s efforts aimed at developing safer and more effective drugs for islet replacement therapies.

Projects

• Aptamer Chimeras for the in vivo Modulation of Beta Cell Mass and Immunogenicity
• Engineering a Human Physiomimetic Islet Microsystem

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Peter+Buchwald

Projects

• GABP is a novel regulator of beta cell metabolism and proliferation

Bio

Chunhua Dai is a Research Associate Professor in the Powers & Brissova Research Group at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on the molecular, cellular, and vascular changes in human islets when they are challenged with hyperglycemia and/or insulin resistance in vivo. She is investigating in vivo age-dependent human beta cell proliferation and how current therapeutic agents for type 2 diabetes preserve and/or enhance human beta cell function or survival in vivo.

Projects

• HPAP T2D: Human Pancreas Analysis Program (Vanderbilt Univ.)
• Molecular Mechanisms of Physiologic Beta Cell Growth in Juvenile Human Pancreas

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Chunhua+Dai

Bio

Yuval Dor is a Professor of Biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has worked in the past mostly on diabetes and tissue regeneration in the pancreas, but in recent years much of our focus has shifted to a new technology that we are developing, for non-invasive monitoring of cell death in humans, based on circulating DNA.

Projects

• Drivers and Consequences of Beta Cell DNA Damage in Type 1 Diabetes
• Non-invasive Detection of Cell Death in Type 1 Diabetes: Insight into Novel Disease Mechanisms
• Non-invasive Diagnosis of Human Beta Cell Damage and Death
• The Proteome of Replicating Cells
• Survival and Potential of Insulin-deficient Beta Cells in Type 1 Diabetes

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=+Yuval+Dor

Bio

Markus Grompe is Professor and Director Family Pediatric Research Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. His research focuses on the use of in vivo selection to enhance gene and cell transplantation therapy for inherited diseases.

Projects

• In vivo Targeting of Diabetes-relevant Human Cell Types with rAAV Vectors
• Gene Therapy for Diabetes
• Antibodies for Beta-Cell Subtype Identification by Immunohistochemistry

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Markus+Grompe

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Klaus Kaestner Professor in Genetics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Functional Genomics Core at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interest is in employing modern genetic, genomic and epigenomic approaches (ChIP-Seq, RNA-Seq, gene targeting, tissue-specific and inducible gene ablation, CyTOF) to understand the molecular mechanisms of organogenesis and physiology of the liver, pancreas and gastrointestinal tract. Disease areas targeted by our research include diabetes and cancer.

Projects

• Drivers and Consequences of Beta Cell DNA Damage in Type 1 Diabetes
• Epigenetic Rejuvenation of Human Beta-Cells
• HPAP T1D: Human Pancreas Analysis Program for Type 1 Diabetes
• HPAP T2D: Human Pancreas Analysis Program (Univ. Pennsylvania)
• The Role of Senescent Beta Cells in Type 1 Diabetes and Type 2 Diabetes
• A New Immunodeficient Mouse Model with Stable Hyperglycemia for the Study of Human Beta-cells
• Can Genomic Mosaicism explain the Lobular Nature of Type 1 Diabetes?
• Mass Spectrometry-based Proteome Maps for Human Islet Cells

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Klaus+Kaestner

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Mark Kay is a Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics at Stanford University. His laboratory is focused in the development of gene transfer vectors for gene therapy as well as manipulating non-coding RNAs for therapeutic purposes. His research has focused on two vector systems, mini-circles and recombinant AAVs (rAAV). Using gene transfer vectors, we studied the potential of using transcriptional-based RNAi to treat human disease.

Projects

• In vivo Targeting of Diabetes-relevant Human Cell Types with rAAV Vectors
• Gene Therapy for Diabetes

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Rohit Kulkarni is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Co-Head of the Section on Islet & Regenerative Biology at Joslin Diabetes Center. His research explores the significance of growth factor signaling mechanisms in the regulation of islet biology by creating genetic models to examine the roles of insulin/IGF-1 receptors and their substrate proteins.

Projects

• Development of platforms for beta cell-specific delivery and ligand discovery
• Development of Small Molecule-based Methods for Targeted Cargo Delivery to Beta Cells
• Interrogation of Dynamic RNA Modifications in Beta Cells in Type 1 Diabetes
• Using ex vivo, in vivo Models and Patient Mutations to Interrogate Pancreatic Exocrine-Endocrine Cross Talk
• Regulatory Networks and Biomarkers of Beta-cell Dysfunction and Apoptosis
• One-compound, one-islet: A High-throughput Platform for Small-molecule Discovery

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Rohit+Kulkarni

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Dustin Maly is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington. His research focuses on generating novel signaling proteins that can be controlled with cell permeable small molecules.

Projects

• Partial Antagonists of IRE1 RNASE - 'pairs' - to treat type 1 diabetes

Bio

Michael McManus is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco and a member of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, the Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Diabetes Center, the Eli & Edythe Broad Center for Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research, and the Innovative Genomics Institute.

Projects

• iSTAR Tregs

Bio

Everett Meyer is an Assciate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University Medical School. His research focus is in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and Treg cell immunotherapy, with an emphasis on the treatment of graft-versus-host disease as well as immune tolerance induction for transplantation and autoimmunity. He is an expert on the role of T-cell populations in immune dysregulation, specifically through the mechanistic study of how CD1d-restricted invariant NKT mediate allergy and asthma in both mouse models and human clinical samples.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_emeyer?hilite=Everett+Meyer

Projects

• CAR T Cell Targeting of Human Islets
• Therapeutic Targeting of Human Islets with Recombinant Regulatory T Cells

Bio

Hiroyuki Nakai is a Professor of Molecular and Medical Genetics at the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine. His research goals are to comprehensively understand the biology of recombinant AAV vectors and the vector-host interactions and to develop new AAV vector-mediated gene and cell therapies to treat various human diseases.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_hnakai?hilite=Hiroyuki+Nakai

Projects

• In vivo Targeting of Diabetes-relevant Human Cell Types with rAAV Vectors
• Gene Therapy for Diabetes

HIRN Webinar:

Bio

Feroz Papa is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program. His lab uses molecular, cellular, and organismal approaches to address broad questions revolving around protein misfolding and disease. His research focuses in protein misfolding in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) organelle.

HIRN Investigator Profile:

https://hirnetwork.org/investigator_profile_fpapa?hilite=Feroz+Papa

Projects

• Partial Antagonists of IRE1 RNASE - 'pairs' - to treat type 1 diabetes

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.

Projects

• Modeling Autoimmune Pathogenesis and Beta Cell Destruction by T1D Immune Systems
• Stem Cell-based Modeling of Type 1 Diabetes to Accelerate Translation of Therapies
• iSTAR Tregs

Investigator Contributed Resources:

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

Bio

Al Powers is a Professor of Medicine, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt University. He is also the Director of the Vanderbilt Diabetes Center, Director of the Vanderbilt Diabetes Research and Training Center, and Chief of the Vanderbilt Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism. His research focuses on pancreatic islet biology, vascularization, development, regeneration, and imaging.

Projects

• Integrative Analysis of Multiomic Signatures and Cellular Function in Human Pancreas Across Developmental Timeline at Single-cell Spatial Resolution
• High-Resolution Analysis of Juvenile Human Pancreas Maturation
• HPAP T1D: Human Pancreas Analysis Program for Type 1 Diabetes
• Integrated Program for Human Pancreas Procurement and Analysis
• HPAP T2D: Human Pancreas Analysis Program (Vanderbilt Univ.)
• Therapeutic Targeting of Human Islets with Recombinant Regulatory T Cells
• Molecular Mechanisms of Physiologic Beta Cell Growth in Juvenile Human Pancreas
• Exploiting the power of CyTOF/Mass Cytometry (MC) to elucidate the complex interactions of islet and immune cells in human type 1 diabetes pancreata
• Single Cell Analysis of the Human Pancreas in Type 1 Diabetes

Investigator Contributed Resources:

https://resourcebrowser.hirnetwork.org/SearchResults/Results/?query=Al+Powers

Bio

Xujing Wang is a NIH NIDDK Program Director in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases. Her interests are in data science, computation modeling, integrative genomics, network biology, and genotype-phenotype relationships.

Bio

Matthew Wortham is a Gateway Award Recipient and an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. His research is to define the mechanisms whereby beta cells detect and respond to changes in their metabolic environment.

Lab:

https://hirnetwork.org/about/participants#short-profile-maike-sander-md

Projects

• A 3D Biomimetic Human Islet to Model Beta Cell Function in Health and Disease
• Metabolic requirements of pancreatic beta cell proliferation