Safe Gene Therapy for Type 1 Diabetes

Description of projects available to graduate students:
The aim is to create a window of opportunity in which a considerable chimerism -- between the resistance Asp57+ DQ beta chain-transfected versus original, non-transfected hematopoietic cells, expressing a susceptibility non-Asp57+ DQ beta chain -- will be present in the patient thymus long enough to centrally delete new, autoreactive T-cell clones, while promoting regulatory T-cell expansion.

Techniques graduate student will learn:
Generate knockout mice to study the expression of single gene encoding diabetes autoantigens in the medulla cells of the thymus.