Rahul Sharma, PhD
The laboratory of Rahul Sharma, PhD, an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Nephrology’s Center for Immunity Inflammation and Regenerative Medicine, was awarded a new three-year grant from Breakthrough T1D, formerly JDRF – Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, to study islet transplantation in patients with Type-1 diabetes (T1D).
Currently, lifelong insulin supplementation is the only treatment for people with Type-1 diabetes. T1D is an autoimmune disease that often begins in adolescents due to immune system destroying the insulin producing cells and is clinically detected when it is too late for intervention. Islet transplantation can restore normal insulin production, but it is fraught with many hurdles including poor quality of pancreatic islets obtained from cadaveric donors and the recipient’s immune system rejecting them.
Dr. Sharma’s lab has identified a category of immune cells called regulatory T-cells (Tregs), that express a cell-surface molecule called ST2. Dr. Sharma’s lab data shows that these ST2 Tregs are resident in pancreas of healthy people and can sense signals coming from damaged cells. The ST2 Tregs efficiently ward off any autoimmune attack, help repair damaged insulin producing cells, and make them more resilient to further damage. The grant from Breakthrough T1D will further Dr. Sharma lab’s research to utilize the ST2 Tregs and identify novel reagents to enhance these cells to benefit T1D patients with durable islet transplantation.
Filed Under: Research