Wang Lab
Principal Investigator: Andrew Zhuang Wang
Institution: The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, TX)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is viewed as a T cell-mediated autoimmune disease resulting in insulin deficiency due to the lack of functional pancreatic islet beta (β) cell mass. Despite significant advances in insulin replacement therapies, there continues to be an urgent need for treatments that can recapitulate physiologic insulin release. The most promising approach is allogeneic β cell replacement but immune reaction is a key challenge. Our group has developed a novel approach in which β cells are bioengineered to contain high levels of multiple types of immune checkpoint ligands. We found that engineered β cells can induce long term durable tolerance in allogeneic transplantation without the need for immune suppression. We have further identified that the most effective immune checkpoint combination for engineered β cells. The goal of this proposal is to optimize key steps of our engineering platform to enhance therapeutic efficacy, while defining immunological events that reestablish self-tolerance. Our application has 3 Specific Aims. The first Aim will to optimizing the tolerogenic formulation for allogeneic β cell transplantation. This involves examining PD-L1/HVEM ratio and liga…
Active NIH Awards
- 1R01DK147004-01: Immune-checkpoint engineered islets as beta cell replacement therapy for type I diabetes (2026)
- 4R01CA292382-03: Tissue engineered organ-specific cancer metastasis model for cancer research (2026)
- 5R01CA292382-02: Tissue engineered organ-specific cancer metastasis model for cancer research (2025)
- 1R56AI188482-01A1: Immune Checkpoint-Engineered oligodendrocytes as treatment for multiple sclerosis (2025)
- 1R01CA292382-01: Tissue engineered organ-specific cancer metastasis model for cancer research (2024)
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