Closer To A Cure Than Ever 

EDMONTON, AB - Dr. Lori West, an intellectual and passionate researcher at the Alberta Diabetes Institute continues to contribute to the fight against diabetes. In 2017, the Alberta Diabetes Foundation (ADF) funded Dr. West’s Immune Tolerance project via an anonymous donor’s commitment of $250,000.

The Immune Tolerance project focuses on transplant rejection and the negative side effects of anti-rejection drugs by generating islet specific regulatory T-cells that can be used as a potential cellular therapy for T1D. Regulatory T-cells are a subpopulation of T-cells that play an important role in our body’s immune system to protect it from self-antigens and prevent autoimmune disease. ADF is proud to fund and support Dr. West’s Immune Tolerance project and fulfill its role as a non-profit organization that strives to make a difference in people’s lives who suffer from diabetes.

ADF had the opportunity to speak with one of Dr. West’s postdoctoral students, Dominic Golec who worked in Dr. West’s lab on the Immune Tolerance project for two years.

ADF: What is the Lori West Project about? Explain its significance.

DG: The goal of this project is to generate islet specific regulatory T-cells to be used as a potential cellular therapy for T1D. Regulatory T-cells are emerging as a promising tool for suppressing autoimmunity and even inducing transplant tolerance. In the world of finding a cure for diabetes, success in generating this tool would result in a cure in targeting T1D and this therapy, plus technology could also be used numerous other manner for various purposes.

ADF: What is the current status of Lori West’s project?

DG: All the tools are there to generate these engineered cells. We have the protocols for expanding, activating, and engineering the cells. Now we move towards engineering cells that express these receptors, potentially giving them islet specificity, so they can migrate specifically in the islet tissue and suppress autoimmunity, in a tissue-specific way. We are scaling things up so we can produce a larger number of these cells and test their ability to suppress T1D in mouse models. We cannot move right to the clinic because we are still at the preclinical stages.

ADF: What were some of the challenges you faced while working on this project?

DG: It wasn’t an easy project to work on. Though, there were and still are various hurdles that we continuously have to work-around. It is a challenge to work with these cells. Anytime you work with primary cells (directly cultured from their source organ tissue or blood cells), which come directly from an animal or human, they are more sensitive to their environment and conditions you grow them in. So, it is difficult to keep the cells happy and get the engineering part of it right. Coming up with a protocol to go about such tasks has been the most challenging.

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease which makes patients’ life challenging 24 hours per day-everyday. To recap, Dr. West’s research aims to investigate new ways to stop a patient’s body from destroying its insulin-producing islet cells. It seems to be a promising initiative to pave a path closer to a cure for Type 1 diabetes. To learn more about Dr. West’s research initiatives, visit this link.