You vs. Yourself

Especially post pandemic, most of us are familiar with our immune system: it fights off our colds, the flu, of course, Covid… It’s pretty good at keeping us alive! But what happens when it gets overzealous and it starts attacking us, instead? I’ll talk to you about what autoimmune diseases are, and about my research in Multiple Sclerosis, a disease where the immune system is the bad guy who unfortunately attacks the nervous system.

Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is a case of mistaken identity. The immune system turns against the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, destroying them as if they were dangerous invaders. Normally, we have immune "peacekeepers", the regulatory T cells (Tregs) that prevent these attacks to our own tissues. In T1D Tregs lose control and the immune system destroys the cells that regulate blood sugar. What if we could restore balance? We work on understanding why Tregs fail in T1D and how we might boost them to stop/reverse T1D. Could fine-tuning the immune system be the key to prevent T1D?