Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Transplantation can be a life-saving treatment for patients in organ failure. Unfortunately, transplant rejection, when the patient's immune system destroys the new organ, is a major cause of illness and death. Patients must take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their life, which do not always work and have many side effects. Our goal is to replace these drugs with a safer and more effective therapy that will protect the transplanted organs over the long term. One promising strategy is to infuse patients with a dose of a special type of white blood cell, called T regulatory cells (Tregs). Tregs normally balance (regulate) the immune system by stopping unwanted immune responses. Recently, Tregs in mice were found to have a key role in tissue repair, which was needed to recover from infections and injuries. Tissue-reparative Tregs may exist in humans as well, but little is known about how to promote this function in patients. In this project, we will see whether human Tregs in the blood, skin, fat, and lung fluid can also mediate tissue repair, and what external signals are needed for these cells to work. We will also modify Tregs to boost their tissue repair potential, and test whether they can better protect against organ rejection and damage in mouse models. Ultimately, this work will contribute to the application of tissue-reparative Tregs as cell therapy both for transplant patients and others at risk of immune-mediated tissue damage.