Scientists at the Benaroya Research Institute (BRI), in partnership with investigators at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, have made a significant advance in developing a T cell therapy to treat type 1 diabetes (T1D). This study, published this month in Science Translational Medicine, outlines an approach to engineer regulatory T cells (Tregs) to stop the immune cell attack on the pancreas that causes T1D.
Dr. Jane Buckner, President of BRI, and Dr. David Rawlings, Director of the Center for Immunity and Immunotherapy at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and their research teams have been working toward this goal for more than ten years. First, they developed gene editing methods to manufacture human Tregs, an important step for overcoming challenges with purifying and expanding Tregs from blood for clinical production. This work published in 2020 in Science Translational Medicine also demonstrated that these engineered Tregs (EngTregs) were functional, suppressing the immune response in pre-clinical models of inflammatory diseases.
